And that my fellow Kossarians, is the only polite headline I could actually post to give just a hint of how much vomit I've swallowed back down in the last few days.
This joke of a carnival barker, with more arrogance than even the "G"od I don't believe in should be entitled to have, somehow claims it's to his credit that the proof of a known fact is now...proven?
Pardon me, Mr. Trump, but the veracity of the other 43 presidents have yet to be acertained. Better get on that, or you might get fired.
I got a little more bile to vent from my spleen that will only fit over the fold. If you will...
So there was a Flat Earth society. (actually there still is, if you count Sherri Shepherd, but I'll acknowledge that there are those of you who don't, and I salute you...I'm not sure how to count her either. I don't want to label her as a troglodyte, lest I get angry letters and indignant emails from them too.) But despite the existence of such galactically gaping idiots, there have been bright minds since the dawn of recorded history who could use their intellect to advance civilization as a whole, despite the disbelief amongst their contemporaries.
The existence and persistence of the Flat Earthers is not to the detriment of those who knew better; nor did it ever cast aspersions on the legitimacy of those who said it was round, except in the minds of those still fearing the great fall from the "edges" of the "flat" Earth. The existence of such people who let their fear encapsulated in their own ignorance did not by itself change the shape of the planet, any more than those who insisted that President Obama was a Muslim, not born in America, make those accusations become material fact.
Ignorance is forgivable; it means that a person has somehow avoided contact with the truth, plausibly through no fault of their own. Willful stupidity by deliberate avoidance of uncomfortable evidence, however, is another beast altogether. If ignorance is bliss, that kind of conscious dodge of obvious reason must surely then challenge orgasms and morphine in the delirium of it's high.
And yet even in the face of reasoned arguments and eventual evidence, people still persisted in their delusions there was a way to "fall off" our planet. (for a particularly amusing story of one, I invite you to read this) And as I have watch the Birther/Trump lunacy, it's as if the famous "Blue Marble" photo taken by the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972 had only just been released last Tuesday...
and there stands Donald Trump bragging that it's only to his credit that humankind now knows for the first time that we all inhabit a sphere, not a plate.
Or a stack of turtles...(BTW, what are the turtles standing on? Oh, nevermind)
The problem with America is not only the character flaws of it's politicians nor their shameful vulnerability to being bought for a price in coin or status. No, I submit that a far more crippling handicap is that we have a populace with such a large contingent of blind nitwits who nightly challenge each other for the title of Most Galactically Fucking Stupid. They watch "reality" on TV, apparently unaware that the rest of us are living in one they surely haven't yet bothered themselves with. The problem is that there are shameful numbers of people - their freedom to be so notwithstanding - who take such pride in being the dumbest rock in the box.
Our founders did not fight, die, and endure so that we could have freedom purely for freedom's sake; maybe you think so - I don't. Freedom to do something ignoble and pointless just for the sake of the doing does not honor the gifts we have been given. A great quote from the movie "Jurassic Park" was delivered by Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcom; hired to evaluate the effort to bring dinosaurs into the current age:
"Yes, but you were so concerned with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think about whether or not you should"
That's a concept that would serve us all well, were it to be considered more often by all parties involved.
Only two things are universal; hydrogen and stupidity. Lately it seems the hydrogen is in danger of being crowded out.
SNAFUBAR stands for
S ituation
N ormal
A ll
F ouled
U p
B eyond
A ll
R ecognition
I'm able to handle that the place is going to be F***ed up from time to time, but my angst, indignation, outrage and rage is because so many - too many - people are comfortable with it like this.
Whether "G"od gave us the opposible thumbs and the huge pre-frontal cortex that is supposed to be our claim to superiority and dominion over all the other "lesser" animals, or we were compiled out of the atoms and void of the universe over incomprehensible time scales and have emerged from the primordial slime through mutation and natural selection to emerge upright and conscious, is not the important question.
If you were to wake up on a deserted island tomorrow, how you got there is not as essential to your future as what you plan to do about it next and going forward. I'm often amused (perplexed) that the same people who insist I suffer from depression and must stop "living in the past" are some of the very same people who butt heads with me ad nauseum that I deny that "G"od created the Earth. Who's obsessed with the past again?
Nevermind.
This country is blinded by schadenfreude; a tragic need to find someone else who's in worse straits than we are so we can claim we're still all right simply because there is someone who's worse off than us. That's a race to the bottom, with no plan to find a way out when we hit.
What matters, what should shame us all, is that so many people seem to be either crawling back down the evolutionary ladder because they aren't comfortable at this height, or despite worshipping "G"od they seem to want to give "H"im back his gift because they can't handle the responsibilty free will comes with -
In the meantime, I'm going to spend my time with people who believe in other things than CT and ethereal deities -
...that endless war does not make us safer;
...that if anyone says they are worried about their grandchildren because of rising US Debt, but have contempt for science that says we're destroying the planet for those same grandchildren, then they have no legitimate love for their grandchildren;
...there is collusion amongst oil companies, commodities brokers, speculators and corporate America to make money for their own personal gain at the expense of the country and the planet;
...that all politicians or citizens are not inherently evil based solely on their party or religion;
and not people who submit to the idea that their country has been taken over by an illegitimate president but who yet haven't done anything but raise money for a PAC and watch the ebb and flow of their ratings.
And make no mistake; these bleating sheep, these "patriots" - they do submit. Anyone who did not would have fired some kind of weapon to "save" theri country or "get it back" by now; raising money for the next campaign does not demonstrate the fierce urgency of now. Shit, their last president and most of his cabinet would have been easily convicted of war crimes and they couldn't even bother with hearing the charges. If there is a "G"od, those who shout "H"is name loudest are in far deeper than I am if that judgment they fear truly awaits us all. Something about bearing false witness...
What those who obsess with President Obamas legitimacy really are really admitting to is that despite the Strategic Air Command having kept bombers with nuclear weapons in flight constantly for 50 years;
...submarines with multiple-warhead missles each capable of delivering more firepower with one rocket than every bomb dropped in World War II by all sides at once, submerged and undetectable for six months at a time;
...despite building more nuclear bombs than were required to annihilate the world a hundred times over;
...all out of overt and abject fear of SOCIALISM;
...those very same panicked souls, the bleating sheep, the Chicken Littles, they now claim that their country was somehow 'usurped' by a one man who is either the Antichrist, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, or all of the above -- and he did it without so much as a shot fired.
Maybe he threw ACORNS, I dunno.
...and for over two years now, despite all the 'second amendment solutions' they still claim are held in reserve when the time calls, all they've done is enjoyed the perpetual 15 minutes of fame (and incoming donations) resulting from incessantly bleating these hysterical claims. Yet, so far, nary a shot fired to "save" or "take back" their beloved country.
Ahem.
I don't know about you, but if my country had actually been taken over and I knew it was real, I'd have thrown whatever rocks, fired whatever shot heard round the world, and started the revolution by now. Seems like the traitors would be the ones enjoying the momentary boost in their campaign coffers and advertising revenue but in truth (by their own claim) failing to keep their country from falling into the open arms of our most feared and nefarious adversaries.
As for Donald Trump, someone please wake me up when this dickhead with the twitchy tumbleweed grafted to his scalp gets the birth certificates of all the other 43 presidents released, all right? Because white or black, Muslim or Christian, Communist, Socialist, Fascist or Captialist, it doesn't speak well for the legitimacy of American Democracy (TM) and might explain our apparent downfall that for almost a quarter of a millenium nobody yet thought to check even one of them...
...until Donald Trump.
On second thought, to call Donald Trump a dickhead is insulting to dicks. My apologies to penises everywhere; you're not a Donald.