Another year is gone;
and I still wear
straw hat and straw sandal. -Basho
As the good book says, there is a time for all things under the sun. To me, that means there's as much beauty in winter as any season. And while oftentimes on the surface nothing may appear to be happening, the true story is under the covers waiting to blossom at a later date. Knowing this, I slipped into the Japanese Garden of my escape from this time of earthly woe to see what I could see on a cloudy, wintry morn.
After a long night's rain I found a squirrel in prayer at the Zen rock garden. In the Spring will come the time for gathering and feeding the body. In winter's respite, a time to feed the soul.
Let us meditate on the movements of the rocks
and the illusion of now.
Quiet reflection
The knell of the bells at the Gion temple
Echoes the impermanence of all things.
As blossoms prepare for their unveiling hidden from the naked eye, the garden heals itself before April's coming festival. A heavy stone from a path through the water had fallen, cutting off one side from the other for the past two years. With the water drained for that, a good time to rebuild the tea house. The garden shall return in triumph.
The colour of the flowers on its double-trunked tree
Reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.
In winter's time to each his own, a contrast of color and colorless, of leafy and bare, and dormancy and activity. The Japanese garden celebrates all these aspects with equal joy, providing a rich palette of experience in joyful invitation.
He who is proud is not so for long,
Like a passing dream on a night in spring.
The harmony of symmetry
He who is brave is finally destroyed,
To be no more than dust before the wind. - the Heike tale
Like a gathering storm
The garden is also the private domain of this heron who flies in on a daily basis oblivious to any interlopers or seasonal change. Ooaosagi is the Japanese word for a Great Blue Heron. For short, we'll call him "sagi-san". It is said he will imperiously stand in one spot for hours.
The mountains in autumn,
there are so many fallen leaves
- looking for my lost lover
I cannot find the path.
In the south end, new paths are under construction. An elevated walkway, new overlooks and even a moat's wall! But alas, I will lose one of my favorite spots: the red brick pathway through the green bamboo. The bricks are from the roads of Fort Worth. The use of bricks in Japanese Gardens is not traditional but the recycling of local material very much is. Perhaps, someone mourns the loss of their brick road as it's replaced with dull pavement.
The old pathway
It is now intercepted by new decking
Walkway descends into this new stone path
New overlook area
Mimicking stone moat walls of the great Japanese castles
Kanazawa castle
The Zen Squirrel and Lord Heron were not the only wildlife to be seen.
A ronin photographer!
When two ronin meet on the road, each stops with his hand firmly upon his unsheathed sword. The opponents search the other's eyes for strength of spirit, deciding if battle should be done. All warfare is based upon deception but the honest eye cannot be deceived. And thus we did battle with our breath visible in the frigid, wintry air.
A picture only an "artsy" judge might like
He was a "competition photographer" only. He parried forth: "I could walk around here all day taking pictures I thought were just interesting to myself." But he chose not to. Only pictures prized by committess did he also prize. But he also expressed grave doubts any picture he took on a cloudy winter's day such as today would have any merit in their eyes. "Too lifeless."
I left my sword in its scabbard. He must find his own path and I could not let him distract me from mine - there was simply too much life in the garden I might miss.
From my proud and strong friend Saburo,
who could not fail you were he even to try...
to secret viewing spots...
to the small but unique personalities...
to nature's coloring book...
To the climbing moss on the gift shop...
to the majesty of still water...
and the infinity of a single leaf,
a composition beyond all human understanding.
Our life in this world -
to what shall I compare it?
Its like an echo
resounding through the mountains
and off into the empty sky. - Monk Ryokan
Rat bastard! she knee-jerked to his parting words, using a phrase she never before used in her life. She wanted to say more but any more words would be too dangerous. Did she really know everything she needed to know?
*********
He'd hurt her drowning in a mess of falling tears. She was not perfect, but their love had been. But to keep it alive he must step into the light where no lie can live - and no lie can live. In arguments against the moon, he flailed false convictions demonizing the light he knew to be true, resisting its dreamy call as an "impractical delusion". No daring love for him, he'd rather be considered a Man Of Reason.
How very unreasonable.
He'd started inching, then pulling, then running away as the dam burst with imagined fear and death. Rocks of false mockery he'd flung against her tender, precious body. Too afraid to step into the light herself, she never saw the demons he fought, failing to call out his shameful motives. Yet, how both so anxiously begged to come clean under the sun!
Dying in chains of which he held the key, the Kingdom Of Heaven lay a forbidden paradise. Unable to deny the truth he now recognized, he pleaded instead not to recognize the existence of truth itself. That only made him more stupid. Terrified of facing the flower of love he neglected, he called defeat upon himself, she his Waterloo, leaving her with only his last stinging remark of destructive intimacy.
*********
[DALLAS - Zebra mussels are like the zombies of the water - you can't kill them... and then they take over.
The invasive species crashes fish populations by hogging nutrients and then they attach their razor-sharp bodies to boats and docks.
"It's mind boggling how bad this is."
The North Texas Municipal Water District decided it would pump zebra-mussel infested water from Lake Texoma to clean Lake Lavon so it could meet demand for its 1.5 million water users.
"We're in a tight spot here, but candidly don't see any other reasonable and practicable alternatives [to permanently fucking the environment]..."
Experts say doing that would spread the infestation into Lavon and other lakes. "A true tragedy."
Once infested, a lake is lost forever. Only one chance to get it right. Better recognize your brother, every one you meet.]
*********
She courageously remembered that fond Spring - that magical, wonderful Spring! When on a warm wet afternoon the blinding optimism of burgeoning life saturated the thick humid garden air consummated by an approvingly streaming sun. They had laughed and loved and forgotten the world, discovering paradise within - the only place it can ever be found. Stray white clouds hung in the sky in bidding to their whims.
Then he shyly confesses at the end of a shared laugh: "I'm funnier when I'm in love."
It was one of those rare, longed for moments when reality's definition sharpens into focus, wondering how one could ever had been so blind. Never did it seem so true the long echoed lyric, "Life is but a dream."
*********
[Their wicked, wicked ways had caught up to them at last. The mad king they'd foolishly let rule over them rousted from office by an angry populace desperate to be led to the promised land. So much damage, so much healing needing to be done - these things must be recognized under the sun.
But must they give up their way of life to reach heaven's gate?
The new king spoke out against the damage done, crowds cheering in teary approval. At long last, a savior had come! But he did not lead them into the promised land. "It's their wicked, wicked ways they truly want," he wrongly surmised, losing the chance of a lifetime and an epoch.
He kept them in the wilderness with a clarion call to hope, the king charming them in a slow composition of mutual corruption as eyes shuttered once again, imagining themselves in paradise despite their obvious pains, swaying them to give up the good fight just as he had done. And as they believed themselves saved so did he. "If they think they are in paradise then I must be the savior!"
Nothing left do but kill the prophets, torture the truthtellers and hide the tears of grieving mothers.]
*********
He swooned at her helpless radiant smiles, gifts to him more magnificent than the sky and the land and the seas. That was me that did that! Childhood dreams popped back to life, sunshine in his pocket. Even in typed correspondence his dancing demeanor was clear as day to her.
She was happiest when she remembered the truth of these fateful facts though she had trouble sticking with them as the Offically Authorized Story of her state.
She'd felt as special as chosen Moses, communing with God on Mount Sinai. How very exciting this love newly met but always known. "Ah, of course you'd be like that!" she find herself thinking. Had she stepped outside to the sight of a burning bush she'd been unfazed, leaving it to the hobgoblins of little minds to explain.
But she was off the mountain now.
Back in the whirling world of grasping idolaters, soothsayers of sly sin, proud proclaimers of perishable promise, the annoying rattle of minds in daily self-avoidance, and the eternal malaise of Man who ceaselessly learns but never understands, she questioned if she even belonged on the mountain to begin with. Suddenly she realized the commitment of Moses to make that hungry climb.
How to face one's Maker where no clothing is possible, alone with the naked truth?
*********
Crowded by uncooperative intruding thoughts, she slipped on the radio - only to flip off again when confronted by the suffocating overwroughtness of a wailing Barbra. But Barbra was famous and successful, a living legend. And just who exactly was she who drove in boredom down this colorless Texas freeway?
Dutifully, she flipped the radio back on. Maybe there was a home there she'd missed. Maybe she threw the baby out with the bath water. Maybe love was an illusion made up to please the stars. That made all these silly love songs made up too. She silenced the music once more.
Had anyone in a city of six million stories cared to notice, a curious soul may have peered into a large white SUV barreling down the road to see a woman unconsciously over-gripping the steering wheel while rocking in frustration as she obliviously vented, "Who am I? Who the fuck am I?"
In a flash of the ever changing currents of traffic she'd be gone, the curious observer abandoned to wonder why she did battle with herself. Probably the same reason we all do, one might suppose.
She failed to notice her passing admirer. Instead, it was one of those dreaded moments when reality's definition slipped away, sliding off the mountain with her confidence. No more mocking music she'd take, just the sound of cold winds of emptiness rushing through her ears.
*********
[He feared how he could still live upon a dying orb. The very old, the very young and the very unloved are the first to go. Moral and financial poverty spreads in unstoppable viral contempt, claiming new victims every day. But the poisoning ways of a stubborn and defiant populace are pried only from their cold, dead hands.
He too played his part in the insanity play.
Having lied in the face of love, his life disintegrated in vain pursuit of scientifically proving said lying valid. But no redeemable value existed. He'd fucked up, his actions beyond the reach of salvation. He'd traded real love for unreal arguments, leaving him to love as cowards are forced to do: from afar and haunted by a life unled.
Were they even to share an elevator together now, they'd still stand oceans apart. He dare not call her home (but must if not to remain damaged goods).]
*********
What now? What was this boulder under her mattress? Like a spaceship hit by an asteroid she'd been knocked off course. Whither the way home? Had she'd been on a vain shortcut after all? Why did she find it so difficult to do what she wanted, struggling against unseen winds? Had she ever been on the right path?
Damn these questions! Leave me alone! Am I indulging myself or does what I do have value? Am I cheating myself if I stop looking? I can't get these bugs out of my ear. I can't think straight! I want to know who I am when I'm with him. But all that is broken now.
Too many voices. Which one the fool's? Her most prized asset, her sense of self, wavered in darkness. Why did she do less when she knew she could do more? She needed to face him, to gain back that missing piece he took. She so wanted to believe her life had purpose...
Sipping her lonely cocktail, she sought to silence doubts whispering of a path unsustainable. She must do something. But not now! I can't do it now! Yes, later, sometime, it must be done. Oh please, leave me alone! It's too much for me to take. Not while I still got feelings. Not while I can still be exposed. I'll call after my love for him is dead.
Winter branches bend
Stripped of leafy greens and buds
Waiting for Spring's hope
--------------------------------------------
Veterans salute former army medic Timothy Cole
The firing of the guns had such an air of finality
Cold winds do blow upon this planet, and when ignored can carry us out beyond the realm of hope. When we fail to prepare for these winds, tragedy strikes, leaving in its wake broken hearts and broken dreams. Then we must ask ourselves: What could have we done differently? What can we do to prevent this from ever happening again?
One thing is for sure: the cold winds will always blow.
Whose child does not count? Do not they all? If so, we often fail to act in accordance with that belief. But even the tears of tragedy can provide seeds of flowering life, the sacrifice of one providing life for countless others. That is the dream of Man.
White roses were handed out for those who fought for exoneration
On a fittingly cloudy, chilly day in Fort Worth Texas, an historical marker was unveiled to hail the life of Timothy Cole, a Texas Tech student robbed of his life in the dark hole of the Texas prison system. At age 39, he died of a heart attack brought on by asthma complications. But the story did not end there.
In the outstanding fact based Soviet film "Citizen X", a serial killer is running loose in the Russian countryside. A committee - of course - is formed to find the source of the killings. As per any Soviet committee, a party member monitored with an iron fist, stating even before the evidence was in a serial killer could not be responsible for the deaths. That was a phenomenon only of the "decadent west" which could never happen in the paradise of communism. How very chilling to watch the search for truth stillborn with a preconceived agenda.
The police in the Timothy Cole case were also very Soviet like in their investigation of the rapes occurring of Texas Tech students in the mid 80s. A female undercover operative had been placed on the campus in the hopes of luring the rapist out into the open. Tim had the misfortune of striking up a conversation with the girl so when the next rape was committed, Timothy Cole was suspect number one - no matter what.
Traumatized relatives of Timothy Cole
It was said more people were at the unveiling than at the funeral
The police "investigators" took a shirt and a ring from Tim's room and used them as evidence. This despite the victim denying their assertion of belonging to the rapist:
The victim never identified Cole as the perpetrator. Even the asthma was exculpatory as the true rapist "smoked heavily" while Timothy never did. The police had their agenda and were sticking to it, and in their minds that proved they were on the correct path. Just never admit you're wrong, comrade.
Tim's brother Cory with his arm around victim
Michele Mallin at the grave site
The event was well covered. Many dignitaries were there:
judges, state representatives and other judicial officials
After the statute of limitations ran out, the true rapist confessed - to deaf ears. None of the authorities followed up on his letter. The Innocence Project Of Texas, however, did. That started a long journey to daylight, as DNA evidence also proved Tim's innocence and a posthumous pardon was issued. Like the Soviet Union of yore, this forced even the Republic of Texas to crack under the undeniable horror of a life raped then killed by its bloody hands:
Jeff Blackburn, founder and chief counsel to the
Innocence Project of Texas, on the left.
Tim's brother Cory now works
for the Innocence Project
With the unveiling of the permanent marker, Texas now slides down the slippery slope of total revelation - thank God! This beautiful metal sign stands as a forever thorn in the sides of those who fail to admit the truth: we failed this man. How many more are out there? Once one wrong is admitted, they can all be. Let the floodgates open! What is known can never be unknown again.
I woke dead in my bed - and the world had gone ahead without me.
I ambled outside into a surrounding hazy grey sky - but it was the wrong kind of grey, a grey that forgot our civilized world of 60 second sound bites, no longer keeping faith with our glorious claims to fame. Grey mist fell upon me and grey I too became. In a twinkling the world had changed but I was not ready. How could this happen?
"Is this a dream? What finally cracked? Who are we?"
Who are we? What made me ask that? I saw bewildered shoppers in the distance streaming out of stale bricked stores, raising their clutching hands to the sky in gross confusion. That's when I knew I could turn to no other soul for answers. Then suddenly I realized I expected this all along. Not maybe this exact thing, but something to happen. It had been building for the longest time. Dew droplets of Spring's unreality sprinkled upon us in helpless abandon. What shall blossom from this?
The cars had stopped moving, left like skinned buffalo carcasses on the streets and freeways. I knew not to panic because everyone else already had. My thoughts turned toward the king - only I never remembered us having a king before. But it seemed the natural thing to do. In memory found I made my way to the throne of power.
The king sat upon his toilet throne in the great Barton hall corrupt in both smell and soulful shit. I wondered why only I had come to see, to know what can be known. My presence was not appreciated as our ruler snarled at my arrival.
"Ruined and rotted! Ruined and rotted! What have they done? The government's tool is evil! Hell's mouth has opened and it suffers no justice. Follow it or die!"
Only then did I realize he was not speaking to me. Rather it was like one of those android robots who speak when their motion detector goes off, alerting them to give their programmed speech. Walking behind I found the cables to reality cut in two. How far down the path of unreality had our king traveled? Dare I even stay?
"They made me do it. They made me be evil! Protect the polluters or die! I want to stand up for what is right. No man can stand for what is right! Kill it! Kill it now! Destroy the foul and feculent government before it's too late!"
Sparks of freshly shorted cables caused me to run away from the robot man of incarnadine hands, living in his world of shit. Did he not realize he asked for his own death? No, of course not - not with severed ties to reality. Where to turn? I rushed outside to see the thoughts of my blind brethren.
I viewed uniformed soldiers rushing ahead to the call of duty but their walk was hindered by an unseen wind. Then I heard a small girl cry out to her mother.
"But why does Grandpa have to go to war?"
"Because he's old, sweetheart, and we can't take care of him anymore."
Soon I was passing the grey troops in their infirmities. I wonder who the war is against that required the eldest among us to be called. No guards were present at the military compound’s front gate. I wandered furiously through the corridors to arrive at the commander's office. As I squirmed my way through a throng of old soldiers I glimpsed walls covered with lusty centerfolds reflected in the light of a booming playstation, the commander with a game stick in one hand and his own stick in the other. The aged men pleaded.
"But sir, you're masturbating away our time!"
"Yeah, I know. But you still have to do what I say no matter what! You got that, soldier?"
"Sir, yes sir! I am a good soldier!"
"Great! Now squeal like a pig, private! Yours is not to question why. Ain't authority great!"
When the pig noises started I fled outside for fresh air, passing an impromptu sign: "Life is wasted on the old! Save the youth!"
Across the way I was struck by a sign exclaiming over a building entrance, "It's A Man's Life In The Service!" I wondered why they even felt the need to say it. Knowing I'd regret what I'd see even before I saw I was pushed in anyway. Peeking in I saw General George S. Patton in a French maid uniform, barefoot with bare buttocks meticulously scrubbing a floor as a high-heeled lusty vixen watched in delighted disdain. The General seem quite proud of himself.
"This is where it pays off! The training and the discipline - God help me, I do love it!"
"You better love it, bitch," corrected the vixen. "Or I'm leaving your ass high and dry."
"Ma'am, yes ma'am! You're the reason we're fighting for!"
Unable to take any more, I staggered away possessed by the thought all wars were fought for no reason, never a noble cause. Who is not a desperate man? I don't want to know...I ran again.
Lost in a yellow-grey grassy field, I fell to my knees to grab my spinning head. "Can't be...Can't be..." I found myself chanting. Then inside me history reversed in my mind, telling me things had always been this way - the sky always grey and the desperate dead fighting wars. The urge to believe was overpowering and I knew not from where it came.
No...I had to believe the military minds had gone mad - but was it only relative to madness from before? I heard triumphant laughter from the other side of a line of evergreys. Maybe someone had found an answer! Fighting the nagging voices within I saw three men celebrating as if they'd conquered the world. Faces fell when they saw me though.
"Stay back! It's all ours! You can't have any! We're kings of the world now!"
Behind them was a hodgepodge pile of blank and lined paper. Notepads, yellow pads, notebook paper, copy paper - piles and piles of it. I was transfixed by their desire to accumulate and protect such a worthless stack of junk. They thought they could read my face.
"Wish it was yours, doncha?? Haha! It's ours, all ours! We gots the paper now! We call the shots. We gonna be livin' the life! Get your own paper! Them’s the rules! Them's always been the rules and we ain't never changing it now!"
Funny, but at that moment all I could think was I bet they hadn't changed their underwear in forever either. I scatted away in curious fretting of how anyone could think simple paper was a pathway to salvation. What if it burned up? Then what? Would their lives really be any different afterwards? Oh, hell! Damn this grey mist in my eyes!
I sought a safe place of my youth, a park by my elementary school. There was an overhang there where I could think - if I still dared to think. But when I got there I saw masses of children with choke collars held firmly by cross parental leashes. The neck of the parents had been stretched six inches too high yet none seemed to notice the deformity - or did they? Constantly they pulled the children along, berating them as they marched in circles.
"Tell me you like the collar and I'll take it off!"
"No! I hate it!"
"Rebellious brat! This is my life I tell you!"
Whenever a child yelled too loudly a man in a black coat and pointed black hat rushed in with black pills for the resisting child to ingest. Like a surreal epic painting, it played like a great battle scene of chaos and despair. Only in this battle it was life that was feared, not death. Not a parent believed taking the collars off might bring peace.
My inner ears ringed with the sound of mayhem. What was this ever louder voice telling me all is as before?? No, it's not! It can't be! It's the grey! Somebody stop the grey mist! It came when we weren't even looking!
I climbed to the top of the highest peak, hoping to rise above the maddening mist. From there I saw down into the valley - revealing why I stood alone on this vantage point of perception. I gazed upon thousands - maybe millions - of chained, toiling slaves connected together in rows that disappeared over the horizon.
"But we're free!" I helplessly retorted.
Grey Mist Lords walked among the slaves taking bites from their bodies as nourishment. Some of the Lords played games of chance and if they lost made the slaves pay with their lives. I knew nothing at that moment but that I must put a stop to this, find a way out for everyone.
But as I got closer I found no lock bound the slaves to the long poles of bondage. I approached a particularly pained person, asking why he did not set himself free.
"I can't do that!" he spat. "Everyone will hate me if I do!"
"So fucking what! Give yourself a chance."
"No! Never! Never!" Then his eyes returned to blankness.
I asked the same of another man but he swatted me away, cursing me as "the enemy". Starved for hope, I tried one more, only he smiled a toothless smile at me in return.
"Ah, that's OK. I plan on doing this to my wife when I get home."
I thought to myself: But you're not going home. I backed away as if an invisible hand pulled me back to safety. "These men...these men...where will they go?" Once more, I stuffed my ears to any answer. Grey was here, grey was there, grey was everywhere. I had to find a light.
Then I saw one, a glowing dome in the distance, a beacon of hope.
"THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD" it proudly proclaimed. But it was not a natural light but an artificial one of burning bulbs on their last legs. I slipped inside a grand and great room where every man was dressed as a working man, arguing in roundabout circles shaking scepters in hand. They had too little currency to keep the lights ablaze, a solution must be found.
"If 2+2 equals four all is lost and we'll never have enough to pay!"
"It's eight, I tell you! Eight! 2+2 is eight!"
"It can't be eight, you fool! Have you no sense of living?"
"You call getting the lights shut off living, Mr. Know-it-all?"
"Let's compromise on six. I vote 2+2 equals six. Who's with me on this?"
"Eight! Only eight! Save the light or die!"
"It's gotta be four! Anything else is a deadly lie! Moving from eight to six is like proposing to fix only half the hole in a ship."
"Better half than nothing! Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good!"
"But you'll still sink!"
"Not if I brainwash myself otherwise!"
"Eight, I say again! Eight! Eight! Eight! Eight! The loudest voice wins!"
"We have to take our medicine and admit it's four, there's no other way."
"Idealistic fool! No one is going to accept four. Grow the hell up and face facts like an adult. You've been outvoted, loser!"
Propagandists hate facts - especially the one they have no vote on truth or reality. To me the answer seemed simple: stop requiring currency for the lights and they could stay on forever. But these were unhappy men, closed of mind and heart. Rulers make bad lovers. I guess they hoped to pass laws to make that not so. Another false faith, another deluded deed, another manic man.
Blindly I ran till I found myself on the steps of a steepled church. Maybe the folks inside could quote an answer, an understanding of the fate of the world of which they often did speak. Maybe I don't know so much after all, I hoped. Reverently, I creaked open the great wooden door, expecting a warm light from within to give me sanctuary. Instead I whispered,
"Grey! Everything's grey!"
They had painted every inch - even the light bulbs. The high priest in robes dripping grey was performing a ceremony of "purification", painting grey onto each member who stood in a line. Those not yet painted were anxious and impatient, roasting alive to be in a state of non-salvation. Those already grey lay prostrate on the floor in divine thankfulness for having been saved. I overheard the sorcerer's words.
"With this I make thee of the grey world, blessed of the world and divine in the eyes of man. May thee be covered in the glory of the great and good grey god and made whole with it. I lift thee from hell's confusion and give thee calm certitude of the one true answer. Those unmarked may neither buy nor sell for they are agents of the enemy who must be purged!"
Naturally at that point all eyes turned to me and before I could say a thought I heard: "Death to the truth-sayer at the door! Death to all who undermine the world!"
Must have been something in my eyes that told them I didn't want to walk around covered in grey shit. But what was going on? An outcast I be! Nowhere to run to...nowhere to hide. Was the grey mist melting our veneer, dissolving delusions from our desires? Too much to take in...must get away...are the subways still working?
There in the underground as yet untouched by the grey, the prophets' song came true when the words of the prophets were written on the subway walls.
"Into the Knowing we are thrust and once Knowing we can never turn back."
But who is ready to know? Who bravely trudges forward into life? The past is gone.
Maybe Bill came across one of my posts or comments where I pointed out atheism is an annoying religion like any other. Bear in mind we're talking about philosophical religion, not practical religion like capitalism (which I'll get into later). Bill likes to act like he's an agnostic (no opinion one way or the other) but he preaches like an old-time atheist, squeezing it in wherever he can even though he claims he "doesn't really like to talk about religion."
Please, someone free Bill Maher! He's forced to talk religion! He has no free will!
To back his claim of being non-religious first thing Bill had to do was lie about the definition of religion, saying it's a belief IN God, which is not true. It's a belief ABOUT God, regardless if you think any God exists or not. If you have an opinion, you are religious, if you don't then you are agnostic. It's a Boolean situation.
See, it shapes up like this: One group of religious assholes tells me I have to believe in God. Another group of religious assholes tells me I have to not believe in God. All I got to say to you religious people is: don't tread your religion on me! Who are these do-gooders wanting to evangelize and "fix" everyone else? And hardly anyone evangelizes more than Bill Maher. Give it a rest already, dude.
The problem with most atheists is that they are very gullible people. Some guy comes up to them and says, "I'm a man of God!" Next thing you know the supposed Man of God is molesting an eight year old. Then the moron atheist says, "See! All that God stuff is bullshit!" Uh, hey Einstein (who did believe in God) that's only a valid argument if you believed the guy in the first place. Gullible much?
No one gets outraged when a plumber molests a child saying, "I no longer believe in plumbers!" Atheists reply, "Well of course not! He never claimed to have anything to do with God!" But again, the plumber has no more or less to do with God than anyone else. Why would anyone believe otherwise? Because they believe in religion, that's why. That's why they always hold up the vast and horrific malfeasance of current and past church conduct as "proof" there is no God.
Here's a clue for the logic impaired: if there is a God of love, burning people as witches would not be a godly act. Therefore, those people could not possibly represent said God. It's just incredible the number of people who fall for that.
A man who didn't believe in wasting time
But don't get me wrong. God talk is just jacking off, much adieu about nothing. Practiced religion is the real killer. The definition of that is your belief system of whatever it is you believe will save you. As Bill himself once rightly pointed out, "Money is the true religion of Republicans." That's what their actions demonstrate despite whatever lip service they may give to give to God, Alan Greenspan or (laughably) social justice.
Listen to people talk. They will tell you in time what will "save" them. Money, war, capitalism, politics, this ism, that ism - pick your savior. I remember talking to this chick on a phone one time who worshiped at the altar of credit scores. I could have strangled her ass. Whatever you trust to get you through this world shows where you place your true faith.
I will finish with one more thing. Bill has also openly said - and I do believe this - that he believes in love. I wouldn't listen to him otherwise. And I believe that's one reason he fears the Bible so much. The Bible doesn't say God is religion or to believe in religion, it says God is love. So if you believe in love you therefore believe in God. Got ya, Bill!
Everyone (who hasn't been around the block) says love will never work but they damn sure do want it!
There's no doubt that for the most part the media in America has been co-opted as an extension of both governmental and corporate interests. Truth is an undeclared enemy by both entities but an obliging public has no more interest in facing facts than any guilty child would. These are cold, hard facts.
The overseas press however has no fidelity to covering up our crimes nor do they see the "profit" we seem to assume from self-deception. It would be a fascinating Rorschach test to ask each American why we invaded Iraq and whether or not we should have ever invaded. Our actions have already revealed our true motivations simply by the sheer fact if we truly were misled we would have been outraged afterwards at the liars. But there was no outrage.
The evildoers in America have been given a free pass and they are having a field day as they find no one wants to know what they do. But the foreign press has no such reservations and oftentimes it's the best outlet for seeing a truer face of America. Der Spiegel (The Mirror) is a weekly German magazine with a long standing reputation for investigative journalism stretching back many decades. It's an outstanding source for inconvenient American facts and inconvenient American voices.
Here in the states it's people like the sick and twisted Alan Greenspan who continue to garner attention in what can only be described as an attempt to believe if we repeat our lies long enough they will become true. Francis Fukuyama of Stanford does not share America's eternal optimism (aka denial). Thus he doesn't sell well here in the land of the free (ride for the wealthy).
Below is a copy of his interview with Der Speigel, one that will enrage many on both the left and the right. For clarification purposes I think it's best to define the Tea Party and Occupy movements. Both movements agree that the redistribution of wealth is crippling our country. The difference lies in that the Tea Partiers claim there's too much transfer to the poor and the Occupy movement claims there's too much transfer to the rich. Apparently, only one group can handle simple math.
Many refreshing points of view here. I do not agree with his assessment that capitalism is the only viable path. If he had said, "In my little pea brain, capitalism is the only way" I'd have no problem with that.
Also, like many prognosticators, he believes that contrary to all current and previous actions that people at large will at some point act in their own interests. However, that is only true as far as people are interested in taking responsibility. Hey, anyone up for apologizing to Iraq for unleashing death and destruction as we admit we only wanted to steal their resources?
As for the headline question I can only say that's the wrong perspective to take. It's not the job of the so-called left to stand for social equality, economic and criminal justice, and civil rights. That's the job of everyone. "Why isn't everyone uprising?" is a better question. Why didn't everyone join the Occupy movement? Do you really believe the answer is not known? If so, that's pretty damn funny!
