One Nation, Under Siege

It became clear the moment Barack Obama was declared the winner of the 2008 Presidential election, that a shift was occurring in American society, a momentous shift, the momentum for which had built over the decades since the end of the 1960's. In the highest bastion of white male dominance, a black man would reign, finally.

To many, it signaled the end of the world.

A cherished view of a nation dominated by the last vestiges of the exclusively white, male Founding Fathers was torn asunder, as if the Starts and Stripes were ripped from a flagpole, dashed to the ground, and trampled. The harsh, unendurable reality of hundreds years of secession, repression, segregation, criminalization, denigration, and enslavement of a people burst forth, as the damming of their drive for freedom was damned by the weakness of a white race unwilling or unable to accept that their view of the black race was built of tissues of self-approbation, self-delusion, and ignorance, not one single stone of truth.

As this wave of change flooded the lands once fertile with overt racism, the spores of that fetid crop were given rise to flourish once more in the light, nourished by the delusional hatred thus uncovered. So it began that the tattered remnants of those forces antithetical to the nation knit themselves into groups that hoisted banners long dormant, taking them to be symbols of the "true" nation, and voicing opposition to anything that spoke to the unity of the disparate elements that, conjoined, make up the United States. Suddenly, it was no longer all of us created equal, but some of us more equal -- and thus more deserving -- of freedoms than others.

These misguided miscreants, buoyed by their wretched enthusiasm, exhorted and supported by The Monied Powers, took to the airwaves and the ballot boxes and battered their way into Federal government, and as the mouse that nests in the gears of the grandfather clock, proceeded to gum up the works. A strong government that could -- and was enjoined to -- support the American people and defend her way of life, began to disassemble the core values that made her great. They put their heads down and rampaged through a system that, while imperfect, had managed to keep the nation together through feast, famine, war, pestilence, and internal strife. A well-oiled mechanism might have absorbed the blow; the government stitched together over two hundred years was not so tough.

It was a simple proposition: the newcomers and their mentors already extant established one goal: to deny the President of the United States any kind of legislative boon, no matter how much it was necessary to the operation of the country. Caught in the midst of a crisis of their manufacture in decades past, these hooligans in the castle proceeded to drag their feet, to spout useless puffery, to point fingers and assign blame, and brought the system of Federal governance to a crawl, barely able to keep it functioning from month to month.

And there was no reason for it.

For in this case, we take "reason" to mean that there was some flaw in character, some dark, deceitful streak, some malevolent undertone, that they could see and we could not.

President Barack Obama presented no such things.

Instead, he was earnest in his attempts to urge the nation along, to light a fire under a sputtering economy, to rein in the excesses of our forays into nation-building at the end of a sword. He spoke of peace, but was unafraid of war. He could wax eloquent about the true meaning of the founding of our nation and at the same time point out its most egregious flaws. Most of all, he was able to draw ire from both sides of the aisle, the surest sign that he was on the right track to handling a fractious and floundering country.

No, this foul, festering obstructionism was not the product of any realized malevolence in the heart of our President. It was -- and is -- the odious stench of racism, swathed in anti-government sentiment, cloaked in jingoism, and borne upon a howling wind of self-importance by Americans who are certain they owe nothing to anyone, even as they are sure they are owed everything by everyone else. It is a match set to the tinder of a nation desiccated by close to four hundred years of treating every person on the North American continent who was not of the "good fortune" to be born of the white race as inferior.

Is every opponent of the President's agenda a racist? Certainly not. If not, however, they have not been in a hurry to denounce their brethren who are. They have not been quick to denounce those who wish violence and death upon him and those who work for them. They have not been quick to derail the fanatical desire of some in their number to drag his name through the mud. They are certainly not quick to acknowledge his lack of malevolent intent. No, they are content to sit on the sidelines, eyes closed, ears plugged, pretending they are above it.

It is clear that there is one narrative in our nation now, that overrides anything reasonable, one that is given the widest possible latitude, one that is shouted from rooftops and television sets: President Obama is destroying America. If that were the case, it would already lie in ruins at our feet, for it was tattered badly by the previous administration's lackadaisical approach to governance and appeasement of its party base. All evidence points to a nation that has resisted a tide of disappointment, disaster, and chicanery, through brute strength and main stubbornness and a willingness of the average American to lend a hand to those in need. Despite every attempt by a petulant and fickle Republican Party to douse the flame of unity, we soldier on, as we always have. If anything, we are stronger for the fight to restore order.

Now, as the grey skies part, it is time to turn from the business of survival to that of restoration. The bombastic lot that plunged us into the whirling chaos of budgetary shortfalls coupled with regulatory dismemberment lain on top of the admixture of nationalist fervor and the tyranny of the minority must be handed their walking papers. The United States of America is not ready to fold, not prepared to simply walk away from the table. We have come too far, survived too much, to allow a bunch of rabble-rousers to continue excoriating a government that has held this nation together for over two hundred thirty years. If they do not like the Federal government, they need not be part of it, but as long as they claim the individual rights and freedoms that that government protects and provides, they will not be allowed to destroy it.

So it is up to the rest of us to put a halt to this madness, through word, and deed, and ballot. Let us restore the faith our Founding Fathers had in us, when they built a nation Of The People, By The People, and For The People, by showing that We, The People shall not give in to the tyranny that some among us would claim as patriotism. Our nation must remain indivisible, with liberty and justice for ALL.

Prevarications, Obfuscations, And The Outright Lies

They lie to us. If not overtly, then through omission. They seek to manipulate us, to drive us to adoration, or to fear, or to desire, or to action, but they do it through manipulation. They act upon the predilections we already harbor, or they pound into us a continuous stream of doubt, or simply repeat the words backed by a seeming surety and sincerity that resonates with us.

But it is all lies.

They want to convince you that they are clean, free of the taint of evildoing. They want you to believe they are right, no matter what the evidence says. They want you to trust them, though their behavior leaves you with a funny feeling in the pit of your stomach.

They are the poltroons, mountebanks, jesters, and megalomaniacs that exist at the edges of society, seeking to use their wiles to manipulate us into giving them what they want: power, money, respect, obedience, obeisance. They flit around us, walk among us, and meander through us, spreading their miasma of incoherence and insensitivity, which clings to us like an unseen coat, poisoning our faculties. We want to believe them, have to believe them, find it difficult to break from their penetrating gaze. We create a veneer of respectability around them that hardens into an armor that deflects even the most pointed queries about those parts of their behavior that trouble us.

We find them in business. We elect them to government, We elevate them in the celebrity parade. We kneel before them in houses of worship. We cheer them in sport. We surrender the natural power of our own intellect in their presence, allowing them to dull our senses and bypass our reason. We want to believe what they say and do is true; oft times, we simply surrender to that belief despite all evidence to the contrary.

Judge not, lest ye be judged, but that does not mean we must suspend all judgment. It means we should not simply place people and things into neat boxes without ascertaining the truth of them. It means we must suspend our innate desire to measure every thing against what we believe and be willing to accept those facts brought before us, irrespective of belief. We must be willing to bend, to narrow the number of absolute codes we carry with us. It means we must not allow ourselves to be so easily led or fooled by those who wrap themselves in the trappings of those things we trust.

The lie is not the thing, for to lie is as easy as telling the truth. It is the intent behind the lie that matters. We call upon the "white" lie to prevent the discovery of a surprise, to spare feelings, to cover a thousand minor infractions in our life, and very rarely can it be said to be harmful. The lie that harms us is the lie told as truth, the lie cloaked in fact, the lie embedded within a web of other lies, the lie built specifically to prevent us from knowing the dark purpose behind the lie. The worst of the lies is that which is coated in officialism, that is "true" because the speakers says it is true. When you have looked to someone as trustworthy, when you have invested in them a tremendous level of respect, when you have marked them as important, the lie they tell breaches your defenses and is deposited in the deeper recesses of your mind, to sit, to fester, to grow, to ensnare reason in the tendrils of deceit. The mind, so swathed, refuses to push back, and reason is choked off.

Not everyone is a liar and not every lie told is intended to do damage, but those that are, when coupled to those figures we deem important, carry tremendous destructive potential for our society. When placed in positions of power, venerated as heroes, imbued with the rank of their office, they can build barriers against the normal forward course of society, attempting to roll it back to beliefs and superstitions and nonsense that previously caused human society to totter on the brink of self-annihilation. Worse, still, they can make it seem that to do as they did or to speak as they spoke carries an air of veracity, that from their lips the words gained truth simply through being said by them.

The lie is perpetuated because it is left unchallenged for those who choose not to apply any discrimination to it. Where facts are rejected out of hand, where belief is stronger than reason, where fame outstrips normality, the lie suffers no damage to many, even where those outside it can support their contention that it is a lie with reason and evidence. There is no comfort in knowing that so many of our fellow human beings in our society choose to simply accept the lie uncritically, content to back in its shadow.

This is the critical point, like so many before now, where we must face down and gear up against the lie. Those in the reasonable, thinking majority of us can no longer stand idly by and let the lies go unchallenged, no longer put up with our fellow citizens and the rank hypocrisy they bathe in. Pull them kicking and screaming we must, out of the dark mists of Middle Age thought and into the 21st Century age of reason. Until we rise up as a mass and proclaim reason a more fit way of providing peace and liberty to all, we will suffer the indignity of ignorance and play with the fire that still threatens to consume us all.

The People We Elect

If you ever wonder why the United States continually finds itself in dire straits, seemingly rudderless, filled with nothing but invective and inaction, we only need look to the quality of those people elected to govern. Or in many cases, people elected who fail to govern.

To give you some fairly pertinent examples:

People Unclear On The Concept

In this age of information access and the free exchange of knowledge, it is amazing how so many of us decide to fall back on ignorance and inaccuracy to state our case. The backlash against reason, the constant rhetoric that decries “elitism,” the gutting of programs that would increase access to knowledge for millions of Americans, is staggering. The country we live in now is hardly recognizable as the nation that sent men to the Moon; in fact, a depressingly high number of Americans believe we didn't actually go to the Moon, that it was simply a government ploy. And this willful ignorance is not limited to areas of science and industry, but even religion, where the profusion of Christian sects that do not practice adherence to the words of Jesus and The Holy Roman Bible is confounding and confusing.

It is as if we live in a modern age wrapped in a dark age, a kind of yin-and-yang society, where intelligence and ignorance are attempting to coexist, but none too successfully. Intelligence tries to enlighten; ignorance tries to proselytize. Intelligence makes aware of real dangers; ignorance makes us fear phantoms and shadows. Intelligence seeks broad consensus; ignorance works to enforce its rules and ideals on others. Intelligence seeks to strip us of our burdens; ignorance seeks to make out yoke heavier and chains more sturdy. The problem is: the two disparate sides of the same coin have trapped us in the middle. The average American can be too easily swayed, and both sides seek to buttonhole us, forcing us to choose which shall rein supreme.

Cause And Effect

His name was Tyler Clementi. I say "was", because the smart and quiet 18-year-old Rutgers University student committed suicide. It is not unusual for high school and college students to kill themselves; the stresses of growing up through puberty and the pressure to excel in school often lead to children finding themselves isolated and unable to cope. Though not everyone succumbs to the creeping fears, doubts, and self-loathing, occasionally one will decide that death is preferable to the "torture" of living.

What makes this death more heart-breaking and mind-numbing than the usual, is the why. Two fellow 18-year-old students, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, perpetrated what can only be described as the most reprehensible and disgusting "prank" on Tyler -- they allegedly placed a video camera in his dorm room, and captured a video of one of his sexual encounters, then apparently broadcast it over the Internet. What was undoubtedly horrifying to Tyler, was that it was a sexual encounter with another man.

Let me be clear: that it was an encounter with a member of the same sex is nothing new, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. The body is a container, a shell, a power supply and protection for the human brain and the genetic material that created it. That we come in two genders is obvious physically, but gender is more than a function of genitalia. The profusion of LGBT individuals in the world shows us that "gender" goes deeper, is more a function of hormones and neural wiring that what sexual organs you happen to have. Love, the tenderest of human emotions, is figuratively a function of the heart, not the head, and there is no reason to think that two people of the same gender cannot love each other. Love is about feelings, emotions, and psychological compatibility, not which tab fits into which slot.

Still, our society has, for the most part, a hard time accepting this. As with anything that science brings to light, the beliefs of many override reason, and they see the human body as some divine arbiter of who you are, and believe that things can only work one way, where that way is merely the design, not the demarcation. A spiritual fear of same sex love over centuries has led to many homosexuals becoming easy fodder for the self-righteous and bigoted. Even now, with the virulent and voracious attacks on attempts to equalize the playing field for LGBT community, we see that innate fear being stamped with the approval of religious zealots, who are more afraid of the truth that stares them in the face, that perhaps their view of how the creator built his creation is not as simple as their ancestors once believed.

Given this, a society where homosexuality is a battleground, an easy target for the bigot and the bully, can we not feel the weight of this discovery of the transgression by Tyler as similar to a weight we have felt on our own hearts? How crushing, to know that his experimentation, in an earnest attempt to learn more about his feelings and desires, would be turned into fodder for the rabid packs of hate-mongers and ignorance-peddlers. More horrifying still, to know that this information would make it out to the world through the auspices of the Internet, bringing down misguided and vitriolic homophobia on a simple 18-year-old college student. How does one fight a world? How can one absorb the blows of dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, perchance even millions? What can you do, when something you thought few would ever know about, is now front-and-center on the greatest communications network of our time?

So, Tyler Clementi killed himself, his life snuffed out by the weight of a world of rabid hatred and fear that would rain down on him mercilessly. And now, two classmates stand accused, but only of an invasion of privacy; heinous enough, given what they did, but far from the only charge they should suffer. For as surely as the planner of a murder also receives a charge of capital murder, even though they have not pulled the trigger or plunged in the knife, so, too, must these two amoral cretins face their actions with a charge of manslaughter. No doubt, they thought nothing of what they did, for this "prank" was not a hallmark of true rational thought and social conscience, but the act of moronic, misanthropic, and mean-spirited individuals, with no consideration or clue as to what decency is. They may not have pushed him off the bridge, but they pushed the poor man's mind into a place where that seemed like the best resolution to a problem they caused.

These two are not alone in their indecency. This week has seen too many stories of LGBT individuals committing suicide, harangued and hectored by small-minded and socially inept peers, who no doubt pick up the threads of their abject hatred from their homes and from other members of their community. How can we be surprised, when the nightly news is filled with scenes of screaming and shrieking sycophants, claiming homosexuality an "abomination," and treating LGBT individuals as if they were lepers, or worse, subhuman? Why should we be shocked, when words spill down from pulpits for supposedly "Christian" ministers, condemning gays and their lifestyle, spreading homophobia in place of messages of mutual understanding and fellowship?

No more. We, of good heart and great conscience, cannot stand for this sort of behavior in our country, or in the world. You cannot look at an LGBT human being and not see them as any less, human, and certainly no less deserving of the freedom and liberty of everyone else. If we are to be true to the founding credo of our nation, that all are created equal, then to condemn these people simply because of what they are is morally reprehensible and hypocritical of us. They want nothing from us, they take nothing from us, and in the end, only seek that which they should have by fiat: the right to live their life as they will, free of ignorant persecution. If we cannot give them this, then our nation is broken, and we mark democracy as a failure.

Fear Factory

Fear is a great motivator. It will take the timid, the weak, the ignorant, and the faithless, and whip them into a frenzied mob, easily led by the mountebank willing to stoke them with the fire of inflamed rhetoric and subtle prevarication. It easier to point to the ills of the world and claim they emanate from a source other than the individual, to a person, or group, or government that is callous or unresponsive or traitorous. It is far easier to spread lies and deceit, than to sow seeds of compassion and compromise.

We live in a time where, given the situation in the world, the turmoil we see, and the information so readily available, that the fear mongers and hate baiters can take their messages of discontent and fury to a wider audience, an audience soaked and steeped in the ichor of marketing, which tells them what they should have, what they must do, and how they must not think about things, but "take our word for it." Generation after generation, as education continues to fail to teach the basic skills needed for critical reason and common sense, when parents have children merely because they are told "that's what society/god wants," and we are told we are not good Americans unless we mortgage ourselves to afford bigger houses, cars, and televisions, the idea that the words uttered by anyone should bear closer scrutiny is as foreign a concept as the idea of the tall sailing ship or the horse and buggy.

So, the fear merchants peddle their talking points in the common market, a new and insidious form of Town Crier, who, rather than seeking to inform, is trying to inflame. The crowds gather around their glowing boxes, bombarded by light that does not illuminate, does not educate, but does prevaricate. Facts, even where they are evident, are glossed over as inconvenient, or flawed, or "propaganda." Those who seek to warn the town of the approach of the wolves are merely "trying to scare us." There are no wolves we are told; only sheep with different haircuts. How can they harm us?

The wolves are not the sheep -- we, the Americans, are. Meekly, we accept, without reservations, the fiery oration of others as gospel, checking our curiosity at the door, placing our common sense in abeyance, chalking up any lingering doubts to random thought. We do not question, do not confront, do not interrogate those who seek to tell us how we should act and what we should do and what we should think. We accept that, somehow, their judgment is greater than ours, even though there is nothing upon which to base such a thought. We would be led, en masse, to the slaughter, none the wiser.

If we do nothing else, we must awaken, must set forth with hungry eyes and hungrier minds, to test the words of these purveyors of "truth." Truth in and of itself, is an ephemeral concept, subject to interpretation, but facts are in evidence, capable of rational analysis, and subject to scrutiny. We must ask ourselves the tough questions. Does the thing harm me? Are we as beset as they would make us out to be? Have we lost anything tangible in the way of rights? Where did they come by their information? How credible is it? Have they lied to us before?

Until we decide to loose the chains that fetter us to the unreal world of fear, hate, and ignorance, and soar up to the heights of human intellect, to think for ourselves, and challenge those who simply believe we have no choice but to believe them, we will be forced to muddle around in the dark, forever the sheep to be shorn by those who would buy the wool and burn it, rather than clothe all humanity in it. We can no longer afford to be complacent -- the future of us all depends on it.

Ignorance In The Time Of Knowledge

The oddest part of humanity's march into the 21st Century, a time of global telecommunication and the interchange of knowledge, is the growing prevalence of ignorance in society. Not the simple ignorance of not knowing things, which is the root of curiosity and the quest for answers, but the ignorance of fact and reason, the actual gainsaying of established convention and lines of thought, which were the basis of the very revolutions that brought about the Industrial Age, the Space Age, and the Information Age. The negation of that which is known, that which is verifiable, repeatable, and fundamental to the operation of the universe, is a conundrum; that so many would profess their disbelief in such things so publicly, an enigma.

Now, this is not anything new; human history is replete with such stories, of philosophers challenging conventional wisdom of their age, decrying the intervention of all-too-human gods, or coming up with simple and rational explanations for natural phenomena. Archimedes, Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Bohr, Einstein... the list of scientists and thinkers who have endured the questioning of their precepts and theories in the face of indisputable evidence or, at the very least, plausibility and potential confirmation through further experimentation, is very long. Those who challenged the status quo, who tore away the curtain to reveal the true operation of the world, separate from the machinations of angels and demons, were reviled in their day, marked as charlatans, and, even when their predictions came true or their theories confirmed, still challenged by those who would not so easily let go their grip on cherished beliefs.

Yet, in an era when so much of what has come before is comfortably ensconced in the pantheon of knowledge, there are those vocal critics who would seek to rewrite the operating system of the universe, to dismiss the operations that are fundamental to its existence, and claim that they know the true intention or methodology of the creator. The look at theories, which are so in name only now, and claim that they are merely "theories," contradictable by "evidence" that is as plain as the nose on your face. What is most astonishing, is how easily that skein of unreason is picked up by the general populace, having apparently been conditioned not to think for themselves, but to regurgitate the missives of others.

The fault lies in ourselves, as does so much of what is wrong in the nation, the world, and the human race. Specifically, in America, education has taken a back seat to so many things. Curricula are still enforced by the States, each with a very different take on what parts of math, science, history, and English are important, constantly changing their criteria, and forcing children into rote memorization of incomplete and often erroneous information, simply because that is what is printed in a text book. The art of teaching is being reduced to ruins in the hands of administrators who are busy collecting the perks of their position, even as teachers are sacrificed on the altar of reduced school budgets and funding. Teachers can no longer teach, but must instead prepare students for unending series of standardized tests, which can no better assess a child's learning ability than an actual teacher. We have slowly taken away the core and fundamental skills of logic, reason, experimentation, and curiosity, and replaced them with pat answers, Internet searches, and performance evaluations.

That we seek to dilute knowledge, can it, prepackage it, and cover it in half-truths and obfuscations, is a reprehensible use of the intellect that humanity has developed over millions of years. While many might shudder to think of themselves descended from apes, they are hardly bothered by the idea that human society is regressing toward their primitive ancestors, by giving up, wholesale, the very advantage that put so much distance between us on the tree of life. That these purveyors of ignorance are given unfettered and unchallenged access to the world, and that there is no hue and cry loud enough to drown them out, may prove to be our epitaph.

As always, hope springs eternal. While the majority may choose to wallow, the edges of humanity continue to move forward, to learn new things, explore new places, and bring us closer to an understanding of the creation of our universe. Science does not seek to replace God, only allow us to read his mind, tease apart the puzzle that has been left for us, and to make our own destiny. In seeking truth and knowledge from the depths of atoms to the distant reaches of the cosmos, we are not forsaking the creator, but delighting in the creation, seeing what a wonderful and marvelous place we live in. If our ultimate goal is to be closer to the source of the all, then science is the light that leads the way. There is no profit in denying the truth or misspeaking the facts; to do so only condemns us to an ignominious end. To broaden our horizons, to spread our minds across the stars and down into the heart of everything, is to enrich us, to let us grow, and to bring us closer to ultimate truth. Isn't that what we want, ultimately?

Smile, Even Though Your Heart Is Breaking

I want you to imagine the following scenario (WARNING: this may disturb you, so tread lightly): you are a young girl, past puberty, and you were raped by your father, brutalized in a way you never thought possible, left feeling unclean, like your soul is now black. You are confused, dazed, and swept up in a maelstrom of recrimination, law, scandal, gossip, and depression. Then, as if it can't get any worse... you are pregnant, carrying the seed of incest within you, an occurrence that is anathema socially and problematic genetically. Now, the horror can never truly go away, for in a few months time, you will have a living, breathing reminder of it.

It would take a powerful constitution, intestinal fortitude, and a great deal of forgiveness, to keep the child. No one likes the thought of a potential life lost, but you would be forgiven for seeing this as a burden that you cannot bear, and no one should ask it of you. This is a decision that is best made by you.

Except that some would say that it isn't your decision, that no decision is required. A life is a life.

To be more specific, Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle believes that "two wrongs don't make a right," and so, a young girl subjected to the brutality of incest has an obligation to carry the baby to term, even at risk to her own life and sanity. In Ms. Angle's own words:

I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.

The carrying of an unplanned -- and potentially unwanted -- child to term is off-handedly compared to a clichéd bit of advice that has little to do with reality. It's akin to telling a death row inmate to "make the best" of their time in jail.

I commend any young girl who can, actually, carry such an unwanted pregnancy to term, and learn to love a child that is the result of such a brutal and vicious assault, either by a stranger or a family member. However, that decision cannot be mandated by the State, either directly, or through the removal of the option of abortion; to do so, is to condemn no-longer-innocent girls to lives of constant psychological torture, and to subject their babies to the machinations of a mother who may see them a font of their unhappiness and self-loathing. Such a lack of compassion is sign of blind faith and ignorance.

It is despicable to replace another person's right to self-determination with your own morality, especially where that morality is based upon a faith that not everyone else shares. The right to freedom and liberty as written in The Bill of Rights makes it clear that the State has no right to tell an individual how to worship, and by extension, cannot promote any particular social view based on one religion. If your faith tells you that abortion is amoral, so be it -- no one is asking you to have one. To then substitute your judgment for that of a young girl, who must suffer all the consequences of the theft of her dignity and pains of pregnancy, due to your misguided belief that you must save her from herself, is criminal.

We Get It

Yeah, we get it.

You hate homosexuals.

Yes… you. The narrow-minded, Bible-verse-flinging, ignorant, spiteful, fear-mongering segment of the population that views the idea of people loving people of the same sex so abhorrent, that if you could get away with it, you’d no doubt tie them to stakes and set them ablaze.

You, who are so uncomfortable with the idea of people being different, that you would do anything in your power to deny them the peace of mind and solace you believe is rightfully yours, and yours alone. You, the ultra-conservative, who cannot grasp that the planet has turned a corner into a new millennium, and that the old ways can no longer support human society. We need new ways of thinking, new ideas, not the old, moldy words of people drenched in fear for their life and fear of those who were not of their tribe.

You will not grow. You will not change. You will not open your heart or your mind to possibilities. You live in the staid, sedentary, somnolent backwater of modern society, afraid that “they” will ruin your way of life, take away your freedom, and somehow desecrate all you hold dear.

I have news for you: you have done far more to desecrate your way of life than anyone. You wield your beliefs as a sword, hacking away at anything than offends your “morality.” You claim some type of divine superiority through your faith, a faith based on hypocrisy and ignorance of the words of your own savior. Anything you do not understand or subscribe to is an “abomination,” to be given as little regard as the dust.

You will stand there, in your apocalyptically-driven glory, and claim that you have “nothing against gays,” even as you seek to fund those who would keep them down, keep them in line, and defend your way-of-life by equating them with all the ills of the world.

You hate them.

Not hate in the manner of holocaust, but a low-grade, simmering hate, never spoken, never voiced, never revealed overtly, but clearly written in action and deed. You paper the hate over with a veneer of morality and community service, but this cannot keep your true feelings from leaking out beneath the facade. You will stand and deny human beings rights, because it offends you to think that they could be happy, too. You spout rhetoric about “family values,” even as you cheat on spouses. You would “defend” marriage, even as you trample upon it with your mistresses. You would claim that marriage is a solemn connection between a man and a woman, when it is more the connection between a man and a slave.

So yes, once more you have managed to deny gays the right to marry. New York, New Jersey, Maine, California… you may sit there, smug and self-righteous, proud of yourselves, but know this: your day is coming. Those of us who value freedom, individuality, and prefer tolerance to ignorance will gather our force of will, and we will drive back the demons. We will supplant you. We will cast the pure light of humanity on your piteous and baleful forms, and drive you back under the rocks from whence you crawled.

There will be liberty and justice, for all.

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NOTE: After writing this, I came to find this wonderful video of NY Senator Diane Savino addressing the State Senate before voting on the gay marriage act that was defeated by a 38-22 vote. It says with poignancy and dignity, what I wrote with righteous anger and frustration.

Ignorance Is Bliss

It must be nice to live in a world where suppressing knowledge and inventing facts are rules, rather than exceptions. How much better it is to go through life ignorant of those things which might upset you or lead you astray. How grand and satisfying it is, conjuring up fallacious tidbits to reinforce your delusional world view. Why surrender to reality, when you can live a life of happiness and joy, ensconced in your cocoon of prevarications and obfuscations?

For some odd reason, a great number of people have either come up bereft of logic and reason, or decided that facts should not get in the way of a good story. In either case, we are seeing, through the media, a wave of tripe that that threatens to engulf our country in a miasma of ignorance. And the media are complicit in allowing it to spread, by eliminating self-censorship for the reward of cheap and easy ratings.

How else can we explain the "birthers" cabal, or the anti-health-care-reform ranters, or the "tea party" crowd, for example? Here we have movements that either a) have incoherent and poorly parsed messages or b) have clear messages based on fabrications, innuendo, and outright lies. In either case, the record is easily set straight, the fabrications are easily debunked, and the messages invalidated by their unreasonableness and illogical frameworks. And yet they persist -- why?

We have methods of communication that span the globe at the speed of light, and ways of conveying this information that allow for individuals to dial in to ideas and data that match their view of the world. Satellite communication, 24-hours news, the Internet -- the scions of the digital revolution -- have made it possible for any idea, no matter how realistic, no matter how logical, no matter how factual, to be disseminated to everywhere on Earth, to be discovered, absorbed, and regurgitated by those who covet such knowledge. It only takes one person to put out a scrap of information, that within hours could be considered gospel.

There is no filter on information, anymore. No peer review. No editor. No oversight. Where those things exist, they are easily bypassed. All one needs is an Internet connection, and a place to deposit the information -- personal web site, social networking site, comment section of any news/entertainment site, etc. -- and through the auspices of "information" providers, web spiders, and re-writers, a "fact" is borne to every machine that can hold it, passed on to every computer that requests it, and lodged on data storage devices everywhere. Even if removed from it source, the information can never truly be erased.

Can it be any wonder, then, that so much unsubstantiated, illogical, and specious knowledge continues to plague us? Were it tucked away in a musty book, on a dusty shelf, in some dingy hall, it might never see the light of day. If the purveyors of such nonsense were still forced to go through others to have their ideas see the light of day, then many of these things would have remained in relative obscurity. They would be nothing more than fables, stories to scare children with, the intellectual equivalent of things that "go bump in the night."

Those of us aligned with the forces of reason, sanity, and logic will continue to rail against the descent into ignorance, but it becomes harder and harder to be heard over the din created by the maunderers and sycophants. The only bright spot in the current maelstrom is that the tools that allow such rubbish to exist and thrive, may ultimately be turned against it. Given time, patience, and the will, we may yet dispel the gray clouds of ignorance, and pull Mankind into brighter light and clearer air.