9th Circuit Court: Where Constitutional Ignorance and Fantasy reign Supreme

Author’s Note: If you’ve been following the news regarding the political system recently, you might have heard about the unsurprising development of a court battle between the Trump administration and the members of Crybaby America (Minnesota and Washington, specifically) regarding his Executive Order pertaining to a temporary ban of immigrants coming from 7 Middle Eastern countries. In this most recent round, the idiot jerkoffs in the 9^th circuit court issued their ruling from what appears to be random shit pulled out of their ass, instead of anything resembling legitimate Reasoning (of which, I’m a huge fan), anything directly related to legislative interpretation, or applicable judicial precedents. Since I decided to waste 30 minutes of my life by reading the entirety of the 29 page ruling by the court, I figured that I should pick this moose turd apart for being the fraudulent pile of crap that it is. (Author’s warning: if you don’t like reading voluminous posts that mock and destroy idiocy while using the occasional naughty word, here’s your chance to bail.)

To expedite this discussion, I figure that I’ll just quote their text (which is available here) and point out the serious flaws in the ‘logic’ of the court’s arguments.

First off, the court explains the arguments that Minnesota and Washington make regarding the ‘legality and unconstitutionality of the Executive Order’:

“Washington alleged that the Executive Order unconstitutionally and illegally stranded its residents abroad, split their families, restricted their travel, and damaged the State’s economy and public universities in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments, the INA, the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Washington also alleged that the Executive Order was not truly meant to protect against terror attacks by foreign nationals but rather was intended to enact a “Muslim ban” as the President had stated during his presidential campaign that he would do.”

It goes on to say:

“The States argue that the Executive Order causes a concrete and particularized injury to their public universities, which the parties do not dispute are branches of the States under state law.”

The only problem with this, is that their case should be thrown out on the existence of the Immigration and Nationalization Act (INA) of 1952, which they claimed was ‘violated’. This is absolutely absurd, once you look at the text of the law in question. In the INA, it is directly stated:

“Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

This should have been enough to throw out the case. They didn’t prove that this was a ‘Muslim ban’ (because when 42 other Muslim majority countries weren’t banned, it kind of defeats the argument) and the President has the authority to suspend immigration on whatever grounds he deems necessary to protect the United States. But to list the violation of the First and Fifth Amendments seems even more blatantly ridiculous.

The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” while the Fifth Amendment states that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime…nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

For one, President Trump is not Congress. It should’ve been obvious in his title. He issued an Executive Order dealing with immigration, which is his responsibility, as President, under the INA. Second, contrary to popular and stupid belief, he’s not making a law that is directed at a religion. A) As president, he can’t make laws. Read the Constitution, assholes. (And no, there isn’t a stick figure drawing version available, so you will have to develop reading comprehension skills.) And 2) the bans are blanket in nature and they affect EVERYONE coming from those 7 countries, regardless of religion. The order also requires any exemptions to the Order be individually vetted by the Department of State.

There are 7 countries that were targeted by the Executive Order and they were targeted because of lapses in each countries’ government emigration procedures and security who were identified by Obama’s administration as ‘countries of concern’. There are 49 majority Muslim nations and if the ban is aimed exclusively at Muslims, Trump seems to have missed quite a few of the relevant countries and 82% of the Muslim population. So the First Amendment doesn’t apply.

Secondly, immigrants and refugees aren’t being punished by a court system or any other U.S. agent. They aren’t being imprisoned, fined, or tortured by the U.S. government. And it’s not even a total and eternal ban on entry! They are simply being denied entry to the United States until the vetting procedures for immigrants and refugees from those countries are reviewed to identify potential procedural security flaws that might allow dangerous individuals in. Which means the Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply.

And probably more concerning, for the rest of the world, is this notion that those idiots in Washington, Minnesota, and the 9^th circuit court seem to believe that the U.S. Constitution has legal authority over the residents of EVERY nation and it takes precedence over that nation’s OWN laws and statutes as to what rights are granted to their citizens. And, even more bizarre, that all it takes is for anyone, anywhere in the world, to simply want to go to America for those Rights and Protections to be immediately granted! Talk about power-hungry imperialist dickweeds!

As for the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act (FARRA), the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) that the Washington and Minnesota Attorneys General claim were ‘violated’ by the Executive Order, this is where it becomes even easier to just toss the case since it’s clearly a waste of the Court’s time.

I mean, come on! Everyone knows that the FARRA “Bars the use of funds for the involuntary return by the United States of a person to a country in which the person has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, except on grounds recognized as precluding protection as a refugee”. This would require proof of said circumstance by each Immigrant/Refugee. Which means vetting those individuals, the very process that Trump wants to verify as being appropriate and conducive to National Security.

And since everyone has clearly been informed that the RFRA states that the Government shall not burden a person’s exercise of religion by Law (so we’re talking about Congress here because Congress makes Laws, not the Executive branch) unless that burden is necessary for the “furtherance of a compelling government interest” and so long as the rule is the “least restrictive way in which to further the government interest”. There is nothing in the Executive Order that mentions or restricts the practice of Islam within this country, so the RFRA, again, doesn’t apply.

The APA doesn’t apply to the Executive Order either, as the APA has to do with the way administrative agencies may propose and establish regulations. Immigration? That’s not really a regulation created by an administrative agency as  much as it is a responsibility of the executive branch as enumerated by Law. That was codified in the INA and passed by Congress, which grants the President the authority to cut off immigration by any group, for any reason, for any length of time that he deems to be in the Nation’s best interest, but I repeat myself.

***

So now that we’ve successfully destroyed the entire justification for the lawsuit, it’s probably time to switch from mocking the blatant ignorance displayed by the Attorneys General for the states of Minnesota and Washington in regards to immigration law and The Constitution and start mocking the 9^th circuit court. Because, if you are a rational, reasonable, and sexy individual like myself what the court issued as their ‘rationale’ for their decision will similarly blow you away with just how full of bullshit these judicial activists can be.

After they list the hokey and blatantly erroneous links to laws and Constitutional Amendments that don’t really apply to the Executive Order, the court excessively defends the legitimacy of the states’ case, specifically how the states ‘suffer’. In typical idiot fashion, they start vaguely citing some portion of Some Important Document (in this case, the Constitution, specifically Article III where the court is granted jurisdiction to hear ‘cases and controversies’), pretend that the rest of the Document doesn’t exist, and then they start their little journey into Fantasyland. This is presumably because they believe that once they, as ‘Highly ‘Intelligent’ and Smug A-holes’, cite some small fragment of Some Important Document, it’s probably safe to bet that others will probably not read the rest of said Document when they start making up all manner of douchebaggery nonsense that is clearly not within the language or intention of said Document, and then they’re fully justified in ‘letting their creative impulses fly’. So, let’s see what else the ol’ Constitution might say on this matter, shall we?

Article 2, section 3: the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Trump is obliged to faithfully execute the Laws of this country. The INA is such a Law.

Article 3, section 2: (what they referred to….partially) “to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party…. and those in which a State shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction.”

This directly states that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction on this matter and it requires that States prove that they are directly impacted by a particular legal event. Revisionist interpretations aimed at expanding the Federal Court system or redefining the definition of ‘directly impacted’ aren’t really required as the text is quite explicit.

Article 4, section 4: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

As the justification for the Executive Order has a basis in National Security by protecting every State against domestic violence caused by Foreign Agents, this should be a slam dunk.

Article 6:2: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

Which, judging from the way it’s phrased, means that the Articles of the Constitution are the Supreme Law of the Land, with the following Amendments and future Laws taking a role of lesser importance and can be struck down if they violate the initial Articles. Which makes perfect logical and legal sense. Passing a Law or an Amendment that negates or infringes on the initial Articles of the Constitution would be a disaster for this country. This also states that judges in every state are bound to this hierarchy of legal operations. This includes the East and West coasts. (Sorry, not sorry!) By this logic, courts are required to consider safety concerns to the nation and rely on the President’s execution of Laws that were passed by Congress that are aimed at providing that safety before any other legal concern. If a National system of governance run by a free populace is compromised by those seeking to supplant that form of governance with a form that seeks to enslave the populace, it’s probably in the nation’s best interest to ensure that doesn’t happen. (Whoops! Are we too late?)

See what I mean about selectively picking out special passages while conveniently ignoring others in Some Important Document? Quoting these little passages might make you look smart, initially, until someone who’s read the full text explains how you’re full of shit and are taking quotes out of context.

After the 9^th circuit court bastardized and took the Constitution out of context (or just blatantly ignored large sections of it), they proceeded to argue that the states face ‘concrete damages’ due to Trump’s Executive Order. Except they don’t offer any legitimate Proof that the damages are actually concrete and that the damages can be directly attributed to the state’s ‘suffering’. They claim that individuals and families would be ‘hurt’ and that because some individuals might potentially be ‘hurt’, that it is incumbent upon the state to take up said grievance and are within their rights to assume the mantle of ‘suffering’.

Ignoring the fact that States can’t vicariously take on the perceived ‘suffering’ of people within their borders and internationally, the imagined ‘suffering’ consideration doesn’t supersede the requirement for the President to ensure that National Security isn’t compromised. His job is to execute the laws on the books.

They then claim that the academic and research rigor of academic institutions would be ‘hurt’, which is a load of crap for three reasons.

1) This will sound xenophobic (and I don’t really care), but it’s been proven in the literature that the academic progress of U.S. students and those taking courses in English as a second language, tends to lag when the instructor is not a native English speaker. (The same thing happens abroad, it’s not just an English language issue.) While I could blame it on thick accents (which is partially true due to different inflections and pronunciations coming from speakers of different nationalities), it has more to do with the cultural differences in how they prioritize educating their students versus personal achievement (research and career development) as well as the attitudes that some cultures have regarding Westerners and those of different cultures.

2) There are PLENTY of highly qualified instructors in EVERY academic discipline from around the world. Hell, some of them might even be American PhD holders! To claim that ‘professorial and research quality will ‘suffer’’ is being excessively melodramatic. A loss of Middle Eastern professors from those 7 countries can just as easily be countered with Middle Eastern professors from the other 42 predominantly Muslim countries that are not affected by the ban.

And C) academic institutions temporarily not having some students and professors from some Middle Eastern countries is neither a large enough nor concrete enough ‘damage’ to the states to offset National Security considerations. They simply do not equate.

So, at this point, from a Reasoned perspective (as opposed to their ‘Logical’ justification composed entirely of vague assertions, some nebulous definition of suffering, some pulling of heart strings, and extremely faulty lines of logic), Minnesota and Washington haven’t really proven the necessary ‘concrete and particularized injury’ that is required to establish Article III standing to necessitate a SUPREME COURT (not a district or a circuit court) decision. Which means the case should have been tossed. Again.

No worries, it gets worse.

“The States argue that the Executive Order violates the Establishment and Equal Protection Clauses because it was intended to disfavor Muslims. In support of this argument, the States have offered evidence of numerous statements by the President about his intent to implement a “Muslim ban” as well as evidence they claim suggests that the Executive Order was intended to be that ban, including sections 5(b) and 5(e) of the Order. It is well established that evidence of purpose beyond the face of the challenged law may be considered in evaluating Establishment and Equal Protection Clause claims.”

Which, again, is horseshit. Statements without concrete proof of attendant action are generally known as hearsay. Donald Trump toyed with all manner of ideas on the campaign trail. So many, in fact, that it was getting hard to tell when he was being serious and when he was just Trolling the World. And technically, it wasn’t President Trump who said those things, that was Republican Candidate Trump. This seems like splitting hairs, but from most legal definitions, they are two separate entities.

In other words, the fact that Trump mentioned putting a full Muslim ban into effect on the campaign trail has nothing to do with the substance of the Executive Order he signed as President, as the ban, again, only affected 7 of the 49 Muslim majority countries of the world. Making his pre-elected comments a major point of consideration in this legal proceeding should have been objected to on the grounds of being both Inflammatory and Immaterial to the underlying purpose and rationale of the Executive Order. This should have been appropriately addressed and dismissed as the initial 7 country list was originally compiled, researched, and approved by the Obama Administration for an Immigration ban. Trump was merely following through on the recommendations of the previous administration.

The 9^th circuit goes on to cite some more unrelated cases that they’re ‘confident’ apply to the current situation, when, in reality, the rulings they cite are only tangentially related to some bogus point that would help further distance themselves from the INA. They’re trying to offer such an overly broad interpretation of Rights and Privileges afforded to those who aren’t even in the country that don’t pass the muster even from a judicial precedent perspective, that the entirety of the 9^th circuit court should be fired for incompetence and dereliction of duty.

So, to sum it all up, the 9^th circuit court showed the world just how phony, obscure, and unconcerned they were with the Separation of Powers as enumerated in the Constitution. They allowed nebulous notions of imagined ‘injury’ and phony claims of ‘religious persecution’ to trump (see what I did there?) the security of the ENTIRE United States of America. They argued, unconvincingly, that the U.S. Bill of Rights and Law applies to everyone in the world, regardless of their location or nationality, even when doing so violates the sovereignty of foreign governments, the powers and responsibilities of the Executive branch of this country, and National Security considerations.

Instead of addressing the claims being made by Minnesota and Washington’s publicity-hungry attention whores known as ‘Attorneys General’ and making them prove their case, the 9^th circuit went off the rails and made up their own boneheaded case that, A) didn’t apply to the arguments made by Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, B) didn’t apply to the underlying justification for the executive order, C) had no Constitutional support or backing, and 4) completely ignores current immigration law and legal precedents. Their decision was derived from one overarching theme, and you might’ve heard it from the peeps in the streets who didn’t like the outcome of the Presidential election:

“Trump is an arrogant asshole who probably hates immigrants and minorities and we’re still butthurt about the election, so fuck that guy and fuck the United States of America. We’d rather watch it all burn than do our god-damned jobs with any sort of intelligence, competence, or integrity.”

Voila! Liberal activist judges at ‘work’!

****

Psst! Hey, Justice Department! How the hell do you dumbasses not win against the diaper-stains that are the Attorneys General from Washington and Minnesota? They literally had nothing to go on. You aren’t exactly showing the world that you’re competent enough to win a slam-dunk case. If I can crush their arguments in about 2 hours worth of online research (with plenty of Candy Crush action mixed in) when I’m not a lawyer (I’ve got way too much spine and integrity for that), then maybe you should think about making me your boss….or quitting your current job so you can obtain employment better suited to your intellectual faculties….like maybe snow cone creator? Cotton candy manufacturer? I’m running out of ideas here since it’s clear that you shouldn’t be allowed to work anywhere that may come into contact with machinery, public health, or anything requiring independent thought. Maybe think about becoming one of those sign holders who stand on street corners? You probably can’t hurt yourself or others with that kind of a career and you’ll be doing what you’re best at…. taking up space. Idiots.

Correction to the Human ‘Rights’ are Women’s ‘Rights’ movement

Author’s note: I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard a great deal of talk about ‘Rights’ lately. Too much, in fact. I sort of ignored this issue as it was childish, ignorant, and petulant and I figured it would play itself out without too much trouble. Or, at least, I hoped it would. Since it didn’t and my hopes are always hideously misplaced delusions, here we are.

There is a rampant bastardization of the meaning of the term ‘Rights’ floating around; so I figured that we all needed a refresher course on the subject as there are some very ignorant people spewing all manner of nonsense out there and it’d be mighty rude to not offer a much needed education to the less fortunate. I’m charitable like that. (Feel free to share this with your friends, enemies, frenemies, local village idiot, don’t discriminate on my account. Or theirs. ;-))

So… ‘Rights’: What are they?

Well, that’ll all depend on who you question on the subject. The Grand Poobah of the United Nations a.k.a.“The Office of the High Commissioner” states that:

“Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.”

He/she/it/they continue to state:

“All human rights are indivisible, whether they are civil and political rights, such as the right to life, equality before the law and freedom of expression…”

All-in-all, not too shabby. I like this definition for two reasons. The first, is that it sounds like it comes from a ‘powerful’ and ‘prestigious’ liberal source, which liberals tend to love and worship. It’s hard to argue with the United Freaking Nations, amirite? (Spoiler Alert: it’s not that hard, idiocy exists at the top of society at least as much as it occurs at the bottom. Sometimes more. We’ll get to those issues later.) The second reason is that it states some very specific concepts that Liberals/Progressives have been ignoring as they prattle about ‘the ‘rights’ that they’re being ‘denied’.’ So, let’s tackle this, shall we?

“Rights inherent to all  human beings… All human rights are indivisible….such as the right to life, equality before the law and freedom of expression…”

This should be abundantly clear where I’m going with these three delectable selections from the text. I’ve kept them in context (relatively speaking) and they speak directly to the rights of those who are literally without a voice in so many matters. Naturally, I’m talking about the Unborn. And this pisses off the biggest segment of ignorant mouthbreathers who dressed up in vagina costumes and marched in Washington D.C. for ‘Women’s Rights’. And….I don’t care. Here’s why.

When you have rights inherent to all human beings with the Right to Life, you have the cornerstone upon which ALL Rights are built. If a human being doesn’t have a Right to Life, then the Rights to a Religion, Free Speech, or Security became meaningless. The dead don’t require the choice of a religious system, they don’t have opinions to voice, and it seems unlikely that they require arms to protect themselves. (Unless we’re talking Army of Darkness. But that’s a different story.)

The fact that this Right to Life applies to all Human beings is disgustingly straightforward. (I say disgusting because, typically, I like a little challenge to untangling moral positions.) The bottom line is unequivocal: the unborn have just as much a Right to Life as the mother does. This is a direct line from The Office of the High Muckety-Muck of the United Nations’ description of Human Rights. If you want to argue semantics, science, or moral relativity, that’s fine. Because I can argue through semantics, science, and moral relativity, quite convincingly, that just about any number of horrific acts and depravities are actually Great under the guise of ‘well, you see, one can argue that…’. (For what it’s worth, semantics/moral relativity are the first and third-to-last resort of those who don’t know Jack or Shit about the world (the last two resorts being hate-fueled name-calling, followed by violence, two tactics currently being employed by the Progressive movement.))

So what else does the United Nations say about ‘Human Rights’? Well, I’ll just take us to the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights so we can have some fun. Because this is where it gets pretty screwed up.

“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,”

Whoopsi-daisies! Now, the unborn have inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights or there is no justification for freedom, justice or peace in the world. Man! That sucks! And here I thought that we could just go to the local Planned Parenthood and get some chopped up baby parts to justify ‘medical research’ that does zero good! (Arguments to the contrary have already been addressed here. Stop wasting my time with your bitching and phony ‘but I care about others’ line. You don’t. Don’t kid yourself.) Now, we have to treat The Dead with dignity and respect? I know, I know! Some of you are saying, “Bump that noise, bro! I like me a little grave-robbing, baby cutting, and corpse desecration to show how much I respect the Power of Life!” but, unfortunately, the Respect for the Dignity of Life is the only thing that’s stopping society from devolving into anarchy and chaos. And you being beat to death with a masonry hammer for killing babies while spouting how much you ‘respect Life’, but I digress.

“Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind…”

Hmm, “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”. Now, personally, I can’t think of anything more ‘barbarous’ than killing a helpless fetus that has no idea or say in whether an outside agent scrambles it’s brains and kills it, before being pulled from the womb and dissected to be studied ‘in the name of medical science’. I’m not sure if others feel the same, but I’m pretty sure there is nothing that comes close. Rape? Disgusting. Murder? Meh, depends on the circumstances. Torture? Bleah! But Abortion? Abortion is far worse than any of those acts, once you know what it is, how it’s performed, and what happens to the fetus once its life has been taken.

At this point, we’ve talked about the ‘Right to Life’ that the U.N. alludes to, so let’s talk about the other ‘Rights’ that Progressives seem to be either unaware of, or are actively trying to suppress in America. I’ll be going in numerical order to make it simple.

“Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Bwahahahaha! ‘Reason and conscience’? Pbbbbbbt! So far, I’ve yet to hear a ‘reasoned’ argument coming from anyone who has been recently complaining about their ‘lack of rights’ in this country. And a ‘conscience’? What kind of mythical creature is that? I haven’t seen one of those in the public realm in 30+ years of life! And this ‘spirit of brotherhood’? Does assaulting those who disagree with you, destroying property, and screaming hateful language count as ‘brotherhood’? Maybe family dynamics are different from what I’m used to, but that doesn’t sound right…

“Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

*Except for those who wish to own a firearm for personal protection, those who disagree with the Progressive ‘cause’, and The Unborn. ‘You can be a disgusting serial child rapist and murderer and we’ll protest your imminent execution, but still reside within the womb, having done nothing wrong, and you’re Fair Game. If only you’d had the opportunity to be born and grow up to be a disgusting menace and detriment to society! THEN, we’d care about your treatment, but now, we’ll never know!’

“Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

*Unless, you don’t agree with the policies of the Progressive movement. Then you’re a racist, misogynistic, sexist, bigoted, patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, phobo-phobic pig who deserves to have their possessions and businesses destroyed, your person and your family threatened/assaulted/tortured/murdered, and your faith denied so you can ‘learn’ to embrace ‘love and tolerance of others who aren’t like you’ like Progressives ‘do’.

 “Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

HELLLLOOOOOOOOOOO, NSA wiretaps! Hellllllooooo, hacktivist campaigns aimed at ‘outing’ those who don’t agree with the Progressive propaganda cocktail! ‘You better agree with us now, despite having no compelling reason to do so other than ‘we’ll tell the world where you live, where your kids go to school, and where you work where people will bully, threaten, and destroy your lives’!’ Don’t forget the incoming flood of hate speech from Progressive bigots! Your employer will fire you because they can’t afford negative publicity from the planned ‘tolerant boycotting’ of them by progressive mobs and bullies!

“Article 16: (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.”

Uh oh! Looks like the United Nations has given the right to form families to heterosexuals and left the LGBT community out in the cold! I mean, from a semantics-only position, they didn’t directly state, “Men and women, men and men, women and women, or plucky brunette news reporters and those who identify as closeted mutated members of the Testudines order with a teenage ‘orientation’ have the right to marry. Those damn homophobes in the United Nations! How dare they let Shredder and Krang take over the world!

“(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

Whoops! You mean that giving benefits and protections to families is beneficial to society’s purposes? That tax codes should reflect this? But that defeats the whole purpose of complaining about the unequal treatment that heterosexual couples receive! ‘So unfair! Hipster, Self-Indulgent, Solipsistic, Ignorant Individual Lives Matter (more than Family Lives)!’

“Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion;”

*Except every variety of conservative, including those of the Christian faith. Because…..‘ew!’ ‘And we don’t really need thought or conscience, we’ve got emotions and propaganda, so we don’t need those obsolete methods of self-regulation, self-respect, or introspection into the justness or intellectual soundness of our beliefs or ideas.’

“Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

*Again. Except for those who don’t agree wholeheartedly with the Progressive Inquisition. And except for those bakers in Oregon or other liberal-leaning states that are compelled, by the Court System, to violate this very right in the operation of their own PRIVATE BUSINESSES.

“Article 21: (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.”

*Except…holy hell, I seem to be repeating myself. Just copy and paste the ‘unless you’re not jiving with the whole ‘Progressive-fascist’ movement’ response and move on!

“Article 25: (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.”

* ‘Mothers? Cool, we love ‘em! Fathers, meh….who cares?’ Looks like we aren’t equal in the eyes of the humanity or most societies around the world… Tell me, what other special treatments would you women like to have that men don’t receive, yet don’t complain about?

“Article 26: (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”

‘Nope! We demand to choose educational and human health positions that violate the basic premise of human existence and True Science, label them ‘healthy’ or ‘scientifically accurate’ (when they’re anything but), call them ‘irrefutable’, and will force them on your child under the guise of ‘public education’ and ‘doing what’s best for your children’. Don’t agree? Then, you’re an ignorant bigot who’s looking to indoctrinate your child with ridiculous propaganda. There’s your ‘choice’: either let us indoctrinate your kid with Liberal-Progressive propaganda and bullshit Pseudo-Science or we’ll call you a recidivistic monster and hound you relentlessly. And believe me, we will stoop that low.’

“Article 29: (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”

‘‘Duties’? Are you saying that society and the community isn’t just required to give us all the free stuff that we want, whenever we want it? That we’re supposed to exercise some kind of restraint, as an individual, in order to ensure that the community continues? That the individual isn’t owed anything from the community but rather, the individual has a responsibility to give back? But that’s NOT FAIR!!!!!! Mommy said I was far more important and special than other people, so I shouldn’t have to operate under the same restrictions that they do!’

“(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”

‘Wait, you mean to tell me that OTHER PEOPLE have Rights that I’m not allowed to infringe on and that all these ‘Rights’ are invariably tied to Morality? But how am I supposed to force my moral relativism and worldview down other people’s throats when I’m supposed to respect their Rights? You’re saying that I have to develop and respect a common moral code with my enemies? Bump that noise! I’m not willing to listen to some power-hungry patriarchal religious zealots who have used some holy book as the basis for both morality and Law for the past 8,000 years because, HULLLOOO! I’M the one who should get to make that decision WITHOUT their input! I’ve got a Liberal Arts degree that took me a whole 6 years to earn, I know shit and I’m important! Amirite?’

No. You don’t. And you aren’t. Therein lies the problem. You don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t understand the consequences of what you propose, and you’re not some ‘heroic member of a glorious resistance that’s making the world a better place’ by forcing your dumbass beliefs on other people. You’re an ignorant fascist twit who wants to trample on other people’s Rights under the guise of ‘tolerance’ and some arbitrary definition of ‘equality’ that Just. Doesn’t. Exist. A large portion of the people in this country and around the world have had enough of it. They’ve extended you patience and tolerance and they see how you’ve ‘repaid’ that courtesy.

My suggestion is that you quit your bitching about all these imaginary ‘Rights’ that you ‘think’ you ‘have’ before you provoke a response wherein all your Rights are taken away, starting with the most fundamental.

Best of Luck!

It’s Cool to be Uneducated about what being ‘Uneducated’ actually means

Author’s note: In the spirit of full disclosure (something that’s typically not done in today’s world of special interests and felonious bolognius behavior), I have a few ‘advanced’ degrees in the ‘Scientific field’ as it exists in the American education system. Not that this means anything in regards to being ‘educated’, just thought that I’d warn those who might ignorantly believe that I haven’t spent countless mind-numbing hours taking tests that have no applicability to Real World Situations (as well as some that do) to satisfy the requirements for a Master’s level (or higher) education.

That being disclosed, this article is about the rampant use of the term ‘uneducated’ by people who clearly have their heads up their a$$es and don’t actually know what the term means (but somehow feel justified in using the term). Kinda like the terms ‘misogynistic’, ‘homophobic’, and ‘racist’. These other terms might be addressed at a different time if I ever summon up the ‘courage’ (another abused term) to become a mighty ‘warrior’ (again…abused) who’s willing to ‘fight’ (a pattern has developed, if you couldn’t tell…) against the ‘Forces of Evil’ (soooo much abuse in this sentence)to address these grievous ‘injuries’ (holy crap, is that a record?) upon Human Discourse.

Educated. Uneducated. I see these words plastered all over the Internet these days. Typically, they’re used to label people as either ‘smart’ or ‘not-smart’. While I’m sure there’s a term for this ‘not-smart’ state, the issue is that there’s a lot of this surreptitious ‘judgment without actually being judgmental’ going on in the world. It’s not the outright judgment that’s in your face and direct like the kind that I typically employ in these little (or not-so-little) posts because I… a) actually know what’s going on, 2) understand the arguments both for and against a position, can crush both whenever I feel like it, and c) because I don’t give a rat’s ass about whether people think I’m ‘mean’ or a ‘jerk’. (Because, in today’s world, Being Right = Being Mean and Intolerant, apparently?) Being honest and direct with judgement is not the form that this New-Age passive-aggressive judgment takes. The people who do the judging of who is ‘educated’, or not, are the people who most loudly protest against people being judgmental towards them. You know the types:

“Only God can judge me!”

“Before you can judge me, you better walk a mile in my shoes!”

“You don’t know what it’s like….to be the bad man. To be the sad man.”

I think that last one was from a song….maybe.

The point is, these types of people are those who don’t want to appear as being judgmental, so they couch their words in ‘soft’ language to try to cover up the fact that they’ve already passed judgment on others but don’t want to seem like a Colossal Dick when someone calls them on it:

“We must take the opportunity to see things from the position of others!”

“Can we really make the claim that what this person has done is bad?”

“Who gets to determine what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the first place?”

These people like to muddy up the conversational waters so as to keep their positions nebulous, to keep people from pointing out the flaws in their arguments, and to sound smarter than they really are. It’s why they started throwing around the term ‘uneducated’ to discuss their opponents on particular issues. They love these kinds of words because the use of these ‘highly intelligent’ sounding words are drugs that fuel their egos. And like the self-aggrandizing addicts they are, they horribly abuse their drug of choice.

So, let’s look at the term ‘uneducated’. Maybe it’s the change in definition that’s to blame for people misusing it? Maybe I’m wrong and they’re using it correctly? I mean, me being wrong about things is theoretically possible, I suppose…?

A quick internet dictionary search shows that uneducated means ‘lacking education’. But what the hell does that even mean? What does it mean to ‘have education’, i.e. be educated? An additional search says that being ‘educated’ means ‘having been educated’, which seems like we’re chasing our tail round and round, getting nowhere at this point. Hmm…. What do we have for synonyms? Maybe that’ll help…  Synonyms  include “informed, literate, schooled, tutored, well-read, learned, knowledgeable, enlightened”

The synonyms for ‘educated’ are pretty cut and dry. Literate: capable of reading, Schooled: one who has attended schooling, Tutored: Royal House-d of Welsh and England. Wait…damned homonyms and lazy pronunciation!

Learned, knowledgeable, enlightened, all of these terms relate to Knowledge about the State of Existence; of Reality. And Enlightened comes with all the trappings of the Age of Reason: scholarly investigation into the state of the world that is only attained through the suspension of superstition and emotion and reliance upon Fact and Scientific Inquiry, not Opinion. These words and their definitions aren’t the problem here. The meaning of those words haven’t changed. So where exactly is the problem? This has been driving me bananas! (Speaking of bananas, I miss being challenged at Mario Kart. It’s sad to be so good at something that nobody can truly challenge you…)

The problem is that the very basis for Understanding, of Learning, has been compromised. We’ve supplanted Factual Evidence with Self-Supporting Fabrications to justify a position. An example:

Mother Dearest: “Hey kids, why are the walls and the carpet in the back bedroom charred, the window broken out, and a Roman Candle on the floor back there?

Totally Screwed Kids who know that their ‘gig’ is up, resort to ‘educating’ their mother: “Well Mom, it’s like this….apparently, all this time, paleontology, biology and history had it all wrong. Game of Thrones is actually a historical documentary. Dragons are real. And since they’re from China (or Valeria), as they’re traditionally revered and where fireworks are made, they have quite a fondness for all things incendiary. In fact, what we know as ‘Roman Candles’ are really just cigarettes to them. And since Mark has always wanted to see a dragon, we let it into the house when it knocked, as it was trying to sell vacuum cleaner attachments. And we thought the best way for it to demonstrate its product was to let it into the back bedroom with that shag carpet. But after it’s demonstration, it got nervous because it was a long day and needed this sale, it pulled out a ‘cigarette’, lit it, the ‘cigarette’ started shooting off fireballs, the dragon, having wings, broke the window and escaped since it can’t afford to go back to prison for arson. And that’s the ‘Truth’, we swear!”

See? These kids are ‘informed’ and ‘more knowledgeable’ than their mother who was going to tan their hides for setting off fireworks in the house. But since her children have ‘educated’ her about how wrong she is about the world….. she’s still going to whip their a$$es for nearly burning down the house because her kids are imaginative, lying, irresponsible weasels who tell lame, awkward stories to avoid ponying up to responsibility and the Facts speak for themselves.

This is what it is to be ‘informed’ or ‘educated’ these days. One has to simply believe the fantastical imaginations of kids who are desperately trying to sell the world on the legitimacy of truly moronic ideas that have Zero Fact to support them.

I once overheard a cell phone conversation between a Social Justice Warrior Princess (no, her name wasn’t Xena) who was trying to ‘inform’ her father on what it is to be ‘transgendered’ and how ‘healthy it was for people to embrace who they really are on the inside’. Here’s how it went down and it sounded eerily similar to the previous conversation…

“See, daddy, there’s, like, this continuum of sexual identities and sometimes, an individual who ‘identifies’ as a girl is trapped inside a boy’s body and because society doesn’t know how to respond to a boy who has a girl trapped inside of them… who doesn’t act the way a boy is supposed to act because society is not educated on the matter and is, therefore, scared, they react badly to a boy who dresses as a girl instead of giving them the understanding they require to be a happy, healthy person who is at peace with their sexual identity. They’re just stigmatized and all they need is love to make them whole!”

Did you notice how NOT A SINGLE certifiable FACT was mentioned? How the ‘education’ doesn’t have any empirical evidence to support it? How it’s just assumed that ALL identities are equally beneficial to this ‘society that has ostracized this individual’ instead of it being proven in any way, shape or form? How the ‘mystical cure’ is ‘love’ and ‘understanding’ (oh look, the most often prescribed placebo medicine for ALL of the world’s woes, how convenient!), which, ironically, as a girl trapped in a girl’s body, she’ll never be able to offer since she can’t truly ‘understand’ the transgendered situation other than maybe she feels ostracized by society like they do (because that’s what all kids these days feel or hope to feel, at least). That she’s equating ‘dressing like a girl’ and ‘acting feminine’ as ‘being a girl’, despite that NOT being the criteria for being a ‘girl’ and not matching how she, herself, behaves or feels?

This is where the overuse of the term ‘uneducated’ is coming from. Kids (and adults) today are using their overly active imaginations to pull forth all manner of horses#it that has NO scientific or empirical evidence or validity, branding it as ‘education’ to obscure the fact that what they’re saying makes ZERO SENSE WHATSOEVER, then passive-aggressively judging but not really judging! other people based on whether they swallow their B.S. or not.

Which is bizarre. Someone who makes stuff up has the moral authority to judge other people? When did THIS become a thing? And why hasn’t anyone told me? My moral authority would be nearly God-like at the rate I make stuff up! And I promise, it sounds WAYYYY more believable!

And it’s not just the LBGTQ crowd that claim that people are ‘uneducated’, it’s abundantly clear in the following alternate arenas: Black Lives Matter (because despite the fact that Blacks represent 15% of the population in the 75 biggest counties in America, they’re ultimately charged with 62% percent of robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in those counties, more than suggesting they have a disproportionate tendency to not only break the law, but to use violence in the process of doing so, it’s Cops that are to blame for the aggression and violent deaths of young black men?), the Pro-Hillary/Anti-Trump political groupies (because while one has a well documented career of living through political appointments through the advancement of her husband’s political career and profoundly screwing up in almost every single one of those positions to the point where it’s crossed into truly criminal behavior, she’s ‘somehow’ the most qualified candidate to….I’m guessing…continue to screw up in the most powerful public office in the world while evading criminal prosecution?), the climate change discussion (which we’ll get into later and it’s hilarious how horribly some very big named ‘scientists’ are screwing up the discussion), and education (because both sides of the discussion are screwing the pooch in different ways; something we’ll also discuss in a later segment.).

In fact, the majority of the stances that are most shrilly argued by most groups in the public sphere (though most tend to be liberal in slant, conservatives do it too) are backed up by this phony ‘uneducated’ label that is affixed to their opponent.

Because nobody knows what it is to be Educated today. We hunt and peck for only those views and arguments that support our position and ignore EVERYTHING else in our self-perceived, self-righteous quest to right the ‘wrongs’ perpetrated by our ‘enemies’, by society, and the greater world around us. Humanity is doomed when we ascribe our limited ‘understanding’ to be the pinnacle of ‘education’ when that ‘understanding’ isn’t based on Facts, Reason, or anything that resembles Actual Reality. And this kind of understanding is killing us. Literally.

So, anytime you hear someone claiming that their ‘enemies’ are ‘uneducated’, you better listen up and quickly identify whether the speaker comes equipped with toilet paper and some air freshener because they’re about to start spewing a lot of crap. And that’s just not very hygienic.

How liberals brought Donald Trump to center stage….and why what he represents is here to stay.

Author’s full disclosure: I’m not a huge fan of Trump, but then again, I’m not fond of any of the candidates for president. So while I’m not a fan of Trump, I am a monumental fan of cause and consequence. You know, the concept that one cause has a multitude of consequences. And THIS is what Trump represents.

He is a consequence that has been generated due to numerous causes that have gone unmentioned in the media and in society. He’s the dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about because doing so will mean that we’ll have to have an actual conversation about some of the disgusting things that aren’t happening to some faceless group in a foreign country that nobody cares about, but to the very people we live with but have ignored and brushed  aside for decades. But let’s get to that point in the right order…

The mainstream media, rank-and-file Republicans (Rinos), and Liberals especially, are facing dire straits. The swelling crowd roar for people like Donald Trump and the Tea Party faction of the Republican party is a phenomenon that they just can’t understand or make sense of. “He’s just like Hitler! He’s a racist dictator! He’s not a true Conservative! He hates women, he’s this, he’s that!”

The shrill denunciations and screaming that’s echoing across social media and television is starting to make my ears hurt, so it’s probably time for a quick explanation of the Trump phenomenon. Because clearly, the media isn’t getting it. And liberals, especially, are clueless as to what to do about him, how to shut him down, or how to adequately laugh him off and ignore him.

“So what is he? Why is he so popular? Where’s his appeal coming from? How can he be stopped?”

All of these are the wrong questions. Because the man’s popularity and widespread appeal doesn’t come from The Man, himself. He’s merely a symptom of a greater underlying malaise and discontent with where a lot of rural (and not-so rural), conservative, lower-to-middle income working class people are seeing the country going. And until you understand the WHY of why they reach out to a man like Donald Trump, you’re basically fighting the Hydra of Greek legend. Take him down, 2 more will spring up in his place…

“So, how did this malaise start?”

Much better question. I can see that you’re on your way to great things.

This bout of anger started in the 80s or 90s (or maybe a bit earlier), before most of today’s brood of spineless, liberal cretins were born. (And I’m not a conservative either. Both parties blow, for various reasons….Try to keep up.)

You see, once upon a time in the 1980s-90s, there was a country that still Manufactured Goods. This country was proud of the superior quality of these manufactured goods that they created and their products were routinely stamped with ‘Made in the U.S.A.’. They were probably of the finest quality in the world (or close enough to what Germany’s doing as to make no difference) and they were the end result of hardworking people working hard (imagine that) and being proud of what they did for a living. Middle and Lower working class people worked these jobs that didn’t require a college education and some serious butt-kissing of douchebag managerial types (who have their heads up their collective asses) to get ahead. Just hard work and All-American know-how and ingenuity was all it took.

But then, along came a little thing called the North American Free Trade Agreement. Now, this bad little treaty sounded really great to pecker political leaders who thought that it’d “expand the market and demand” for their crony capitalist masters who were actually eyeing Mexico’s lax environmental standards, substandard living conditions, and ridiculously exploitative labor regulations. Once NAFTA was passed by Republican Rapists and Democratic Dickheads, manufacturing took a nose dive south….by relocating their businesses to Mexico, leaving upwards of 700,000 people without jobs.

Sure, pundits and economists can say that “net trade increased with the Free Trade Agreement”, but the money WASN’T being made by any of those 700,000 people who were cut loose by companies outsourcing their jobs to Mexico. That kind of thing pisses you off, when you hear that something is ‘a success’ when YOU were the one who got canned and had to scramble and fight for a new job that pays significantly less than what you’d been getting paid, while some other already-rich-a$$hole made even more money that he/she doesn’t need to survive or provide for their family.

So, lower-to-middle WORKING class people who were working these jobs took a hit. But they’re resilient and that wouldn’t have done them in.

But then you had a whole slew of other ‘Free Trade Agreements’ in the intervening years which did little to foster a sense of optimism and hope for the future in low-to-middle class working folks’ lives.

Adding to this group’s misery is the opening of American auto markets to Japanese imports while American car makers were effectively blocked from competing in Japan. And what happens when you give someone access to your bread and butter without them extending the same courtesy? Oh. They take your bread and butter, then your cutlery, then your fridge, and kick you out of your home.

How many automotive manufacturers and their suppliers were effectively hung from the neck when the Japanese automakers got to town? Add to the equation how the Japanese and the Chinese manipulate their currency markets to further facilitate growing U.S. trade deficits and you start to see a rise in anti-free trade agreement tendencies amongst the same low-to-middle income working class demographic. (But, hey, the stuff at Wall-Marrt is still cheap and that’s just the cost of doing business around the world!)

Add to this simmering cauldron of resentment, a nice dash of managerial incompetence and lack of foresight from GM, Ford, and Chrysler’s executives prior to the massive rise in oil and gas prices leaving all three companies woefully unprepared to handle the catastrophic drop in demand for their gas guzzling beauties, where more layoffs and bankruptcies were filed and now you’ve got an even larger pot of people who are pissed off at, not only foreign competitors, but the pieces of s#it who were in charge of things over here who should have known where the gas price rise would take American and foreign demand for the last vestige of American manufactured goods. (God bless run-on/compound-complex sentences!) Japanese auto manufacturers have been pushing fuel efficiency since the very beginning, so they were ready and waiting.

This is embarrassingly bad. I mean, if you lose out to a better ‘team’, it’s one thing, but when members of your own ‘team’ who are getting paid a lot of money to be the ‘visionaries of the future’ for your team are actively sabotaging your chances of success by being a bunch of blind dumbasses, that’s just plain low. Because it’s still your team that’s lost. And the loss isn’t related to anything you could have done, but you can be damned sure where the layoffs and job terminations will be coming from. And it ain’t going to be the people who screwed things up in the first place. $#it always flows downhill.

So Pontiac’s doors got shuttered, multiple rounds of layoffs and scaled back production at other automotive and manufacturing plants began, suppliers’ doors closed due to decreased demand for parts and labor and this pot of angry, low-to-middle-working-class people starts to get larger. And angrier.

Add the fact that labor union leaders helped facilitate repeated backstabbery in these areas helped turn this group of people off of both the Democratic Party (who represents sleazy labor’s collective bargaining practices) and the Republican Party establishment (who overwhelmingly represents dickweed management and executives across a wide swath of industries whose business model for increased revenue and ‘success’ is to Move the Company Elsewhere), which means that this group has become angry and disaffected with the entire political system.

With this, we’re really just scratching the surface with these people. Because, up to this point, we’ve only talked about the legal issues affecting their job status. Start talking about Illegal Immigration and this flame starts to kindle into something greater. And more dangerous.

Remember those despicable free trade agreements where the majority of manufacturing jobs went straight south before the ink was even dry on the laughably lame legislation? Well, now, all those Central American countries have those jobs that were once American operated. Which means there should be so much work down there that people should be clamoring to return to where the opportunity is really at….their home countries.

But what’s this? Illegal immigration from south of the border skyrocketed during this time? ‘But why, oh why?!? They’ve got plenty of jobs down there!’ Rough estimates show an almost linear upward trend for the Illegal Immigrant population starting at 1990 (~3.5 million) to about 2008 (~12.2 million) when the global economy collapsed.

So, now, low-to-middle working class people who used to work manufacturing, who had their decent paying jobs to support their families located here in The States, watched their jobs head to Mexico (and beyond) and to replace it, there are millions of Illegal Immigrants who are now here, in America, competing for what little jobs are left for manual laborers who lack a college education? That means labor gets real cheap, real quick. It’s simple supply side economics. And what? There’s no penalty for hiring Miguel? And Miguel’s people are racking up ridiculously high medical expenses and increasing the rate of crime in the area?

Then, you get these simpering, wealthy, liberal, limp-wristed diaper-stains who say ‘multiculturalism is the way to go’, which is basically spitting in these people’s faces. I mean, having some greasy weasel tell you that you should ‘embrace’ what has effectively become your financial and literal death isn’t going to sit well when your American Dream has turned into an American Nightmare.

Got news for you, dipshit, you aren’t the one who lives next door to these immigrants. You’re comfortably safe in your gated communities with rent-a-cops policing the ‘hood. You don’t get to see, firsthand, what goes on outside your gated estates. You don’t get to see a horde of Mexican men come boiling out of a house to help young, dumb girls inside to rape and/or impregnate them. These aren’t your girls who manage to make it home, faces blackened up by these ‘poor unfortunate souls just yearning for Opportunity’ (if they come home at all…). These aren’t your wives, daughters, girlfriends, or sisters being felt up or harassed in supermarkets or stores. You live in Liberal La-La Land, safe from these situations.

There’s a reason why there’s something called ‘human sex trafficking’ and why the latest ring busted by the FBI involved an organization of illegal immigrants and their sex slaves who were migrant (or U.S. citizen) women and young girls who either ran away or were abducted from their families. And this organization spanned several states across The South. Where you don’t live. You spineless halfwits make excuses for these scumbags as they peddle low and middle-class girls out to other men. You make excuses for the rampant drug use, drug-related violence, and trafficking that occurs within these same groups. Because it isn’t your problem.
Because you don’t have to deal with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all illegal immigrants are drug dealers, rapists, or sex ring operators. I’ve worked with quite a number of decent Latino men and women in a number of different jobs. On the whole, they’re good, hard-working people. I’m related to quite a few of them, in fact. But I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t a boatload of bad apples in the batch that need to be removed. Which is something that Donald Trump has stated… that the mainstream media has whitewashed as being ‘racist’ and ‘intolerant’. When something is factually accurate, it can’t be racist. It’s simply factually accurate. Don’t go playing no race card, ya hear? Stick to the facts.

And since we’re on the topic of racism, let’s talk about how else you liberals are getting it wrong….again….and opening the door further for The Donald.

I’m not going to lie, there are some racist wankers in some of the more rural areas of the country. We had some in the place where I grew up. They were mostly a fringe group that most white folks in town barely tolerated on most days, and actively interceded against when the degenerative kooks started trying to hassle the ‘differently colored’ folks in town.

And that’s what you liberal jackasses don’t get. Many, if not most, rural communities aren’t completely populated by cross-burning clansmen. Many, if not most, communities detest these recidivistic halfwits. Painting communities as being one thing based on the actions of a few fringe members of the community is called stereotyping and is awfully close to bigotry, two things you liberal twits claim ‘doesn’t need to exist in this society’ when you’re talking about Muslims or Illegal Immigrants, yet enjoy dishing out quite often when you’re talking about Christians or your fellow Legal Citizens. And this is coming from a fellow who ascribes to NO particular religious denomination. I play no favorites.

And since I’ve done quite a bit of traveling across this nation of ours, I can tell you, unequivocally, that there’s wayyy more racism in urban areas than in rural areas. I’ve been jawed at, had attempts at intimidation (epic fail!) thrown my way, and been heckled by ‘brothas’ in urban areas who don’t realize that my ‘white’ is only skin deep. Then my mouth opens and, suddenly, everyone’s on the same page. (I just don’t care about skin color.)

This is NOT the case with all white people in urban scenarios. The ‘knock-out game’, gang violence, black-on-white crime, criminal statistics indicating that blacks (or African-Americans, or whatever they want to be called) are responsible for, not only the majority of violent crime perpetrated against other blacks, but also statistically more responsible for the violence perpetrated against whites and all other racial groups. (The FBI has all the statistics. Go do the research.) Something’s inconsistent with your whole ‘whites are perpetrators of all the most egregious crimes on people of color in the country’ argument with those kinds of stats. News flash: ‘whites’ are a colored people too. If you aren’t willing to look at the simple facts and the statistics to see The Truth, that REALLY makes you a racist and a bigot. And ignorant.

*****

So we’ve peeked into the neighborhood, let’s take a look inside the homes and see how Liberalism has managed to screw that up too.

Let’s see, most low-to-middle class, rural, working class homes are typically…..what? Come on, think it over, it’s not hard! Religious! Yes!

I’m not going to paint with an overly broad brush and say they’re all one denomination or another but generally speaking, they’re Christian or have Christian leanings. And they’re mostly socially conservative. Which means that you arrogant, sneering sissies out there who have the ‘balls’ to denigrate a religious constituency who advocates non-violence (because THAT takes guts *sarcasm alert*) and mock their religious beliefs as ‘ignorant, archaic, and out-dated’ while prattling on about how little you actually know about your ‘super-awesome’ faiths (Science and Secular Humanism), you really aren’t scoring any points with these people.

And when you start attacking one of the most Holy and Revered religious institutions in human existence (marriage), you start pressing on a nerve that is already raw.

Liberal peckers typically come from highly urban areas where marriage has typically been seen as a joke. It’s not a joke in smaller towns and rural areas. Marriage is a holy vow that is respected and expected in these tight knit communities. It’s one reason why urban and rural divorce rates have historically been very different. So if you’re coming from an area that sees it as simply a financial union, a reason to ‘party’, and/or a ‘right’, as opposed to an ‘obligation and a moral duty to provide the next generation’, you’re already pissing in someone’s breakfast.

Advocating that 2 men or 2 women are ‘just as deserving of federal tax status, benefits, and gushy emotional narcissism’ as a man and a woman who can and are naturally producing something worthwhile to society, isn’t going to sit too well with people who see the institution of marriage as something that is sacred, hard work, profound, and only between a man and a woman.

And this isn’t to say that Trump campaigns on this subject, it’s simply an explanation of another reason why those who support Donald Trump have felt ostracized by poorly thought-out liberal positions….and want nothing of what you’re selling. Just sayin…

*****

And this is still barely scraping the tip of the iceberg of the Trump phenomenon. We could talk about gun control, abortion, government intrusion into the private family structure, growing immorality, irresponsibility and disrespect across the nation, religious restriction of anyone who’s Christian, and any number of other issues that are near and dear to those of the liberal “I don’t want to think about the consequences of my actions” bowel movement, but I think the point’s been made abundantly clear.

*****

You liberals talk of ‘inclusion’, ‘acceptance’, and ‘caring about your fellow human’ but it seems that you only mean it when you’re referring to everyone who isn’t rural, conservative leaning, Christian or Christian-ish, and/or working class. Then you’re all about bigotry, hatred, and watching someone bleed out their lifeblood so that others can feed upon them in the hopes that those who do the feeding will leave you alone. (They won’t. The events unfolding in Europe are just a precursor of what’s to come.)

You have done absolutely nothing to help out your fellow working-class American. You haven’t even bothered to look through their eyes at what your actions and dumbass causes are doing to their way of life.

So when ‘The Donald’ points out these kinds of situations and people respond positively to his message, it’s because many of them have had front row seats to racially motivated violence or crime perpetrated ON them by another group. It’s because many lower-to middle class working people have had front row seats to the persistent taking away of every opportunity that keeps them employed, successful, providing for their families, and safe. It’s because you whiny, syphilitic, limp-wristed liberals who live in glass houses have helped to kick and spit on everything that they hold dear and offered nothing but blind hatred and derision to their way of life, while prattling on about ‘tolerance and respect for others’ whom you never have to interact with on a daily basis. (And you know what they say about those who live in glass houses…)

And until you extend a hand to help them right the wrongs that have helped capsize their lives, they aren’t going to attempt to find common ground with you when you know nothing of their situation or demonstrate that you care about their lot in life. It’s why they’re willing to destroy themselves by voting for embarrassingly incompetent leaders like Sam Brownback instead of voting for any Democratic option for political office, like they’ve done in Kansas. They’d rather accept leaders who will take them to a blatantly obvious destruction than accept the liberal point of view that has led to their immediate annihilation, time after time. Because that’s what you’ve proven yourself as being….the kiss of ignorant death.

These people are resilient. They’re survivors. But they aren’t saints, so they aren’t going to just forgive and forget all these issues. And if you don’t come up with some way to alleviate their pain, you can only expect that this anger, which has been simmering and building for the past 20-30 years, to only grow larger until it explodes in a way that you won’t like.

Getting ‘rid’ of Donald Trump isn’t going to get rid of all the attitudes, experiences, and feelings of people who have been ignored and dicked over by the political establishment for the past 30 years. And if the Republican (or Democratic) Party tries to ignore him, try to silence, or get rid of him, they’re in for a very rude awakening. They’ll have revealed their true colors to the world and will lose their power base to a 3^rd party forever.

Without further ado, I give you President Trump. Or anarchy. It’s your choice.

Religion versus Science versus Secular Humanism

Author’s note: “In the Beginning….” starts the most controversial set of words that any human has declaimed since the Beginning of Time. Now, personally, I don’t particularly find Religion to be all that offensive, but then again, I come from an awesome background that had my parents requiring me to examine other points of view and either support my loud mouthed utterings or, failing that, granting me the opportunity to Keep My Mouth Shut. Which was graciously offered after my numerous positions were summarily Destroyed by several Mensa caliber intellects that ‘just happened’ to be Permanent Residents within my family. You see, unlike many loud-mouthed knuckleheads that are actively wasting valuable resources today, my family felt it was a Solemn Duty to Challenge Their Offspring. They did it, not to crush me into Submission, like many Egomaniacs and child abusers often do, but to insure that me and my siblings/cousins did not become robots who mindlessly follow orders without Thought or Reason. And to keep me from becoming a resident in Boneheadistan, they also promptly, and often brutally, crushed my Ego and Self-Adoration when I started getting Too Big For My Britches. As they should have. Excessive Pride causes problems for others.

“KNOW what position you’re advocating and KNOW what positions others advocate. Understand their arguments and either lend them your support, if they’re sound, or pick them apart if they’re phony. And if you come across some big-mouth twit who is going out of their way to beat people over the head with how ‘great’ and ‘smart’ they are as they preach Ignorance and Idiocy to those who don’t know any better, Humble Them. Right down to their core. Insane little Emperors gain their throne by either being born into their Seat of Power or by bending those of lesser wills, characters, or intellects to do their bidding. Understand their methods, then…..Break them. Take their tools and reduce them to rubble. If you don’t, the misery they’ll generate will increase geometrically, then exponentially as their power grows.” – This was the unspoken motto that I acquired from the Mighty Jerks of Antiquity known as My Family.

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To begin this journey, I was first made aware of the Bible when I was 4 years old. Not through formalized attendance in a Church, but through my parents. I began to read, and with my mother’s help to explain some of the ‘big’/archaic words and their meanings and with my father’s help to address the inconsistencies, I finished the Bible by age 6. It’s not ‘too difficult to understand’, as some people think. That’s just a cop-out for those who are mentally lazy. Anytime someone says that something is ‘too hard’, they’re most likely just being lazy. Or they Suck at Life. True Story.

I was introduced to Science and the Scientific Method at about the same age and proceeded to devour every Science book and course that I could lay my hands on. Science too, isn’t ‘too difficult to understand’ and for the same reasons as The Bible.

All through elementary, middle and high school, I continued to read as many perspectives as I could find and began to Argue With Family as it offered the kind of argumentative experience points that allowed me to Level-Up quite quickly. As a noob (newbie, for those who don’t speak geek gamer lingo), I was ‘slaughtered’ mercilessly, over and over again, gaining experience, intellect, and the crafty mind and tongue that would make me capable of Holding My Own. (What can I say? I stuck with Arguing because I’m stubborn and don’t mind intellectual/emotional punishment.) Then, I took my honed abilities to school. (Which, in hindsight, is probably the worst place to go if you can think, argue, or want to have friends/girlfriends. Lesson learned.)

In many of my more advanced English and Debate classes, we began the process of introducing Socratic seminars. A topic would be introduced, people would pick a side (usually out of some knee jerk impulse), the fight bell would ring and the sides would argumentatively start to duke it out. I, on the other hand, would play rope-a-dope with everyone by leaning back in my chair and listening and watching as arguments started creeping out of their caves. I wanted to see where all the arguments were coming from and you can’t do that very well if your Mouth is Flapping. So I Listened. And Waited. Like the hungry Shark that knows that the mouthy, abusive, fat kid who tortures kittens is going to fall off the boat, sooner or later.

At some point in these discussions, someone would say something that would ‘click’ at being at the Necessary ‘Level’ of Stupidity, to which I’d sit up, lean forward, and open my mouth to unleash the support/destruction to both sides that I had been carefully crafting throughout the discussion (My Honors English teacher loved watching these exchanges and said it gave her tingles when I would lean forward with a smirk on my face because she knew my ‘ducks were in a row’ and it was about to Get Interesting and Entertaining.).

After high school, I was whisked away to college and landed myself in a class that finally exposed me to an immense array of Deep Subject Matters that were not only permissible, but required to talk about in No-Holds-Bar discussions: Philosophy of Religion. On the 5^th day of class, the stereotypical God-Hating Half-Baked-Pseudo-Science-Loving Dawkins-Groupie Pomeranian preened himself as he scored a minor point in some meaningless discussion that escapes my memory. Now, it being a Midwestern University that I was attending, it was only understandable that his adversary, Bible-Thumping ‘God-fearing/loving’ Religionaut would respond, and he did, retorting with something well-intended/poorly delivered that was equally unmemorable. After watching in silence as the Atheist Pomeranian saw his window of opportunity to humiliate his foe, he began to repeatedly harangue his adversary about his belief structure and arguments for a suitable amount of time to really get his Head of Stupid Steam built up. Unfortunately for him, it was also the exact moment that I decided to lance his swelling ego….with the argumentative equivalent of a Tactical Nuke. I realized Conan’s answer to “What is best in Life?” that day. In future classes (he left that day’s class early, teary eyed and red-faced), he started treating classroom discussions as an ACTUAL discussion, instead of just a place to hop on a Soap Box and denigrate the concept of a God in front of a live and ignorant audience. The Important thing that I took away from the discussion was just how fervently Science and Religion HATE each other. Which was incredibly confusing to me since they’re both talking about the same thing. They’re just using different words. It’s like one person demanding that everyone call 6 donuts a ‘half dozen donuts’ instead of just calling it 6 donuts. And someone else saying that they’re wrong and stupid. And it turning into a knife fight that escalates into War.

It wasn’t until several years later that I realized that these two sides are still battling it out and the stakes have gotten too high to just ignore it anymore. So, here I go….again on my own. Going down the only road I’ve ever known! Like a drifter I was born to…..oh. Right. The discussion. Sorry.

The biggest argument that (what I consider) Little Atheist Peckers have concerning the Bible is that the Bible ‘appears’ to be flawed. It contradicts itself in places, it has ancient people talking to Burning Bushes (most unoriginal joke ever?: “dude, he must’ve been burning some ‘bush’ to hear imaginary voices”. Good one. Haven’t heard that joke about a billion times….), and that the Bible seems to have issues with historical context or accuracy.

For instance, the Egyptians were known as being fastidious record keepers, yet, despite finding it worthy to mention in their records: the particulars of wheat harvests, the accounts of military battles (both wins and losses), and constantly evolving discussions on articles of religion and government within their society, they failed to mention the events listed in the Bible whereby the Israelites were granted ‘permission’ to leave Egypt? As in, ZERO mention of the 7 Greatest Afflictions that God Has Ever Used on Anyone Whose Name Wasn’t Job? AND He/She/It cast these Afflictions across the length and breadth of Egypt to such an extent that the Pharaoh was forced to grant the Israelites their ‘freedom’? Historical records indicate that the Egyptians never had slaves. They used domestic laborers who were PAID to construct their monuments and these construction efforts were timed to coincide with the annual flooding of the Nile River so the laborers could earn money while they were waiting for the floods to recede from their farmland along the River’s banks.

This whole ‘Bible not representing Reality or Historical Accuracy’ argument is probably a valid issue. If record keepers of the time and area in question, the broader fields of Science and Archaeology, and Reason fail to support a particular narrative in the Bible, these areas need to be addressed with the following questions:

1) Who gains most from a particular narrative? If someone tells you of a ‘quick and easy way to make money’, ‘how to avoid paying into Obamacare by exploiting some ‘legal loophole’’, or how to get the M(an/en)/Wom(an/en) of Your Dreams, you can bet your unborn/neverborn children’s college fund that there’s a reason that they WANT YOU to believe Their Story. In some fashion, they stand to gain from the narrative that they’re pushing. Ordinary people don’t go out of their way to let others know of something that runs counter to their desired goals. In other words, Donald Trump isn’t going to take the stage and suddenly start talking about how to reform the corporate and high income tax code to more efficiently cover millionaires, billionaires and high-priced toupee aficionados to eliminate the National Debt. That simply wouldn’t make sense for him to do that. Humanity is fallible, after all, and they are fully capable of being selfish, petty, and thoroughly disgusting and making up stories to vault their ‘culture’ into some kind of Supremacy-Through-Tribulation paradigm. If something in the Bible only fits a narrative of a particular group, that benefits them in some fashion that doesn’t comply with reality, ditch it. It’s probably phony. God doesn’t play favorites. That’s a human weakness.

2) Does a Biblical passage make sense within the broader understanding of God that is expressed in the Bible? For instance, if God stated His/Her/It’s Will and was willing to eradicate all of Humanity that wasn’t following His/Her/It’s Will, would it make sense for Him/Her/It to arbitrarily reverse the Decision and give some people a Special Exemption from Divine Law? Of course not. Because then God is Inconsistent instead of Infallible. A God that starts off by saying that “Ice Cream is a Delicious and Holy Treat”, can’t very well say, later on, that “God is Lactose Intolerant and Milk is an abomination” without appearing to be Forgetful, at best, and Insane, at worst.

A concept of God that contradicts itself will subject that God’s followers to derision, ridicule, and scorn from those not of The Faith. Which is exactly what Christianity is facing today and has been facing since the establishment of the Catholic Church. Either address the holes in the story in a manner that lends consistency to the whole or accept that others are correct in their assessment that you’re following nonsense. The former suggestion is significantly easier to rectify than people might believe.

If something doesn’t make sense with what Reality seems to support, this should be addressed as well. If God wrote the Rules of Nature for the Greater Kingdom of Life and Every Species is following that course except Humanity, then Humanity will have Big Problems Later.

News Flash: ‘Later’ is here. And those Big Problems are tearing Faith down and pulling Humanity apart.

And these are basically the most consistently used justifications that those phony Faux Science-Loving Ankle-Biters are using to denigrate Religious Faith. Other justifications exist but they tend to be more asinine and inane than truly relevant to the discussion, so I’m leaving them out.

The problem that these Faux Science proponents have is that THEY aren’t immune from being Idiots either. They, ignorantly and foolishly, believe that because they have a passing (as opposed to a full) understanding of concepts like Evolution*, that they’re justified in being Smug Jerks to anyone who doesn’t know enough about Science to be able to refute them. And if they do run into someone who knows A LOT MORE about the Sciences, they turn into passive-aggressive sissies who try to hide behind the line, “look at all the horrible things that Faith has done”, as if that, in some way, absolves them of being a turd sandwich. The fact that Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong didn’t ascribe to any Faith is a point that is entirely lost to them. They think that they know it all and make it LOUD and CLEAR to everyone that they are the ‘smartest, most cleverest, most hippest, skinny jeans wearingest, ironic beard growingest, most irreverent’ wankers on the planet. Because, if they had the slightest understanding of Physics, Math and diverse other realms of Science, they’d be a little bit more respectful of Faiths that don’t have a recent track record of beheading or suicide bombing those that mock them.

Let’s take a little look at some Examples, shall we?

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” Genesis 1:1-1:3

Genesis is a fairly amazing account of Creation. The concept of a super-powerful God (not just a regular powerful God, this one hits the weight room) demanding that Creation simply Spring Into Being is Pretty Potent Stuff. And since Science just can’t ignore the concept of Creation, we might as well take a gander at their explanation. You know, just to check notes.

Most scientific theories regarding the creation of the Universe tend to conceptually reduce to a common theme: At some indefinable and unknowable location (oooOOOooo, a mystery!), 14 billion years ago, there was a mass that possessed Infinite Density and an Infinite Temperature that was occupying an Absurdly Tiny volume. We’re talking about the size of a pinhead here, folks. For all intents and purposes, this point ‘just exploded’ (either once or multiple times, if you’re a proponent of the Cosmic Inflation model) , causing the Universe to Spring into Existence.

This is fairly significant because both Religion and Science advocate that there was A Beginning to Existence and that this Beginning was ‘shrouded in mystery’. I’m so sorry, Steady State theorists, the universe hasn’t always existed and remained unchanging throughout time. You’re on the ‘wrong side of history’.

What’s even MORE remarkable is that, had Baryogenesis NOT violated the Conservation of the Baryon Number, the present universe wouldn’t have become dominated by matter. In essence, the universe would have remained ‘formless and void’ and objects like stars, planets, asteroids, people and Salisbury Steaks would never have come into existence (which would’ve Sucked Mightily since I enjoy 4 of those 5 items that possess matter).

So, by using General Relativity and Particle Physics, scientists have generated a Scientific explanation for the creation of our universe that, ‘miraculously’ seems to emulate Religion’s depiction. We don’t have a clue what existed prior to the Big Bang, as the Laws of Physics no longer work beyond The Beginning. The Laws of Physics get Rabies, do Meth, PCP, and LSD at that point. What we do know is that, for whatever reason, our current Laws of Physics took form after the Universe exploded, bringing Order to Chaos. Which seems awfully suspicious… or auspicious. Pick your poison.

And if you take the next logical step to evaluate Genesis further, the scientific consensus suggests that the Inner Planets (of which Earth is included), were beginning to accrete and form rocky protoplanets before the Sun had acquired enough hydrogen and gravity to induce sustained Thermonuclear Fusion. Which would mean that the Earth was still ‘formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep’. This was the status quo until a posited shock wave from a passing supernovae caused the necessary compression to allow gravity to pull sufficient matter inward to ignite thermonuclear fusion within the Sun. Which seems quite fortuitous. Without that necessary shock-wave, how were we supposed to have a place to stand on in order to denounce Creation if Creation didn’t give us a place to stand on, after all? Isn’t that a monumental Catch-22?

In fact, if you continue all the way through the first 7 days of Genesis and then play Match-Em through Earth History, Paleontology, Biology, Physics and Math, it’s flat-out eerie how closely Genesis matches up.

2^nd day: After the world was created, The Bible says that God created an expanse to ‘separate water from water’, with the expanse being called ‘sky’. (That’s fortunate! It’s a good thing it wasn’t called ‘Potato’ or ‘Basset Hound’. It’d be weird to look up in the ‘Potato’ to see Superman flying. Or to admire the stars hanging in the ‘Basset Hound’. Less confusion this way.) This is much akin to Science’s depiction of the formation of the Earth’s atmosphere whereby water from above (comets, extraplanetary water molecules, etc) was separated from the developing oceans and water bodies that were being formed from tectonic activity, volcanic outgassing, erosion, and comet, meteor and asteroid impacts. The atmosphere was protected from solar winds by the development of a magnetic field from the movement of molten iron within a planetary core that has survived and protected the Earth for the past 4 billion years, something that Mars wasn’t able to accomplish. Another ‘fortuitous’ event, what do you know?

3^rd day: ‘God’ let the land produce vegetation. (Science says that plants were the first lifeforms to colonize land. And this event occurred after Cyanobacteria had effectively generated the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and continents had begun to self differentiate.)

4^th day: Let there be stars, a sun, and moon to separate light from darkness. Science relates this to the kickstarting of the Sun’s thermonuclear ‘engine’, formation of the moon, gravitational attraction of the moon and the Earth (hey, what are you doing later, you green eyed, foxy lady? Can I peek at your peaks and valleys? I see that I influence your wet areas through tidal forces. You’re so naughty!) Granted, this one is potentially misplaced. Still, this is 3-for-4 on the Big Days. Doing pretty well there, guy!

5^th day: “Let the waters teem with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” “Let the birds increase on the earth.” This relates to the explosion of Biodiversity in the Oceans, the migration of creatures onto land, and while it fails to directly mention the extinction of most dinosaurs, it does mention the rise of birds (the last dinosaurs). So we’re at 4-for-5, with a walk .

6^th day: “Let the lands produce living creatures according to their kinds.” Science says that the Rise of mammals occurred after the Cretaceous Mass Extinction.
“And Let us make man and woman.” Science says that the Rise of Humans occurred after the establishment of Mammals as the dominant life form on land (though, I’d argue that they haven’t risen that much from their mammalian brethren.) Still, that’s a pretty solid 5-for-6.

7^th day: Even God knows that a break is needed from work. All work and no play makes God exhausted and more prone to workplace related accidents. I see you, Platypus and Spiny Echidna. What are you and where did you come from?

So, when you compare Genesis and the consensus Scientific Theories of Existence that are based on Fact, Observation and the Scientific Method, Religion is batting .833 in terms of order. If you combine Day 4’s activities with Day 2’s and reorganize those activities, you get exactly the same general order of the transitions that have occurred on this planet up to this point. Which is INSANE, considering that these were simply the ‘uncouth mouthings of barbarians who lacked education, science, or ‘REAL’ culture’ that had this ‘concocted’ story that was passed down through oral tradition before it was finally written down sometime in the past 8,000 years. The only difference is the issue of Time. Which, if you know anything about the Hebrew Calendar or their tracking of time, you’d understand that it’s not something that they really do well. They are certainly no Mayans, as far as their calendar is concerned, that’s for sure.

The question becomes, how is Time measured? How is it explained to others? If some Supreme Alien Race (or God) came down from the heavens and told you about events that happened so far back in time as to be meaningless to you, since, as an uneducated herder, numerical concepts like ‘Million’ and ‘Billion’ would be absolutely worthless to your day-to-day functioning, would you be more inclined to shrink the numbers down to values you could understand or would you keep repeating terms that you had no inkling of or appreciation for when describing Creation? It’s not THAT far-fetched, after all, that a story that long got put through prehistoric civilization’s version of Cliff Notes.

How is Time measured from the Scientist’s perspective? Well, it all depends on which scale of Time you’re looking to operate by and which region of the world you’re in. In regions covered in glacial lakes, you’ve got varve data, in regions that have longstanding tree growth, you’ve got dendrochronology, in areas that have been covered in glaciers, you’ve got ice core data, and in the world’s seas and oceans, you have oceanic sediment cores. These represent the basis for most scientific discussion relating to the last several thousand to several hundred thousand years, as it’s possible to keep an unbroken record of Time using some or all of these methods in conjunction.

As you can probably imagine, if you live in a location that doesn’t have a glacier or a glacial lake, if you live in a location that has been repeatedly destroyed by forest fires, and/or if you aren’t Aquaman’s roommate, it’s unlikely that you’ll have a direct and unbroken record of ‘short term’ Time for your area. There are numerous other issues associated with these forms of Timekeeping and tremendous gaps in data that scientists are still trying to fill. Translation: it’s not complete. And it’s not Perfect.

Once we get past 800,000 years, scientists have to resort to different measures to track Time. This starts wandering deeper into the realms of Geology and Nuclear Chemistry. Methods used in Geology tend to be fairly imprecise. One can generally determine the sequence of events by using the Principle of Original Horizontality, the Principle of Faunal Succession, and the Law of Superposition. These methods are known as ‘relative dating’, which is not to be misconstrued with ‘dating relatives’, something only Royalty and Backwoods Hillbillies can do without raising eyebrows. Relative dating is great for getting a general ‘feel’ of how old a particular rock unit is relative to a different rock unit, but these methods don’t really ascribe values to how old that unit is. To do that, we have to turn to Nuclear Chemistry to measure Time. And this is where it gets tricky and complicated.

In Nuclear Chemistry, scientists utilize naturally occurring radioactivity to ‘clock’ how long an element has been in place. It works via the principle of a ‘half-life’. An example: If it takes John 20 minutes to drink half a gallon of milk and it takes him another 20 minutes to drink half of what’s left (on account of his rapidly filling stomach) and an additional 20 minutes to drink half of what’s left from there, and so on and so forth, you could probably calculate how long it’d take him to empty the full gallon. Or at least calculate how long he’s been drinking it based on how much of the gallon is left. In this case, you could say that the Milk has a half-life of 20 minutes because half of the volume will be drank in that time. (*It should be noted that as milk is being removed from the jug, that volume is being replaced with air. And this observation is what’s important.*)

With nuclear radiation, you start with an unstable nuclear material, Potassium-40 (or some other radioactive isotope), that, through random processes, undergoes radioactive decay by emitting radiation and the material slowly starts converting to Argon-40. Now, if scientists can look at how much Argon-40 there is, relative to how much Potassium-40 that’s within a rock sample or the atmosphere (and assuming that there’s no other possible source of Argon-40), they can make a rough estimate as to how old a rock sample is (as in all forms of dating, there’s always a little room for error: nervously blurting out awkward information, talking about ex’s, mixing up names, etc). Scientists utilize this method to generate values for how old the Earth is, how old the Solar System is, and, ultimately, how old the Universe is. But there are a few issues with this method of dating that should be fully disclosed.

1) Scientists can’t figure out why some radioactive material undertakes the Nuclear Weak Interaction, resulting in radioactive decay and why some radioactive material remains unchanged. The general mechanics of the Nuclear Weak Interaction are known but many properties of the Weak interaction are entirely unique when viewed against the other Fundamental Forces. Quarks (things that make up the Fundamental Particles (Neutrons, Electrons and Protons)) simply change their properties during Weak Decay. It’d be like Gravity arbitrarily deciding to flip directions causing Up to be Down or me just deciding to become a wombat. And it literally and instantaneously happening (and none of this crap of receiving ‘species therapy treatment’ and ‘species reassignment surgery’). Why do quarks do this? No clue, dude. It. Just. Happens. Scientists also assume that these rates have been constant since The Beginning and when pushed on whether this is a sound assumption, the Scientist’s response is the same as a Theologian: “Just take it on Faith.”

Scientists have no clue why or when a particular radioactive nucleus will emit radiation and decay into a more stable element. They just know that there’s an amount of time that it’ll take for half of the material to decay to another element and, with that knowledge, they can predict how long it should take for the next half to decay. Once you start looking at the ramifications of Particle Physics, Reality really ceases to make sense. Quantum entanglement, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, The Electron (which, depending on the Physical Law you’re working with,  has a defined radius….and no radius and 1 electron can pass through 2 different slits simultaneously due to its wave-like/particle-like dual nature), all of these concepts suggest that the universe is nearly devoid of any fundamental permanence, yet Existence has continued for 14 billion years? Shut the front door! That’s a contradictory statement and we don’t take kindly to those kinds of things around here!

2) Many different forces can ‘fudge’ with the numbers involved in radiometric dating. If a rock is heated, compressed, injected with chemically active fluids, hit with gamma radiation, if the half life is too short to leave original parent material, any of these situations can either reset the radiometric ‘clock’ or simply blank the clock from giving a firm age on a rock sample. And no, the universe doesn’t care if the radioactive particles were almost done with their wash cycle. The breaker was kicked. Start over, jerk.

So, to summarize, Scientists calculate ‘long-term’ Time based on a Force that affects subatomic particles in a way that seemingly contradicts the Rules by which the other Fundamental Physical Forces operate, that they can’t predict, test, or control in any fashion, that can, itself, be easily affected by Cosmic and Planetary interactions involving heat, chemistry, pressure or external radiation that they assume to have operated with the Same Rules and at the Same Rate since Time first started and this method is to be trusted to give the Correct Time? And their calculations involving ‘short term’ Time use methods that aren’t Globally Valid that also have issues with reliability and consistency, yet Religious notions of Time are to be criticized because they’re ‘unbelievable’ and involve an ‘invisible’ God working in ‘mysteriously capricious’ ways? How does that make sense, again? Oh. That’s right. It doesn’t.

Time’s a relative abstract notion that has no meaning unless there’s someone who can prove that they’ve just been sitting in their lawn chair, sipping a cold beverage as they record the events of the Universe as the Eons pass by. Which means you’d need a God to independently validate the scientific method of timekeeping to invalidate the Biblical View of Time. Talk about Irony!

The point being, if you appropriately ignore the argument of ‘impossible’ Time and shift One Day in Genesis, you get Complete Agreement between Science and Religion, as far as the Act of Creation is concerned. Which is profoundly fascinating….to me. Maybe not you. Some people just don’t have the same amount of creativity, intellect, Handsomeness or curiosity pumping through their veins, after all. But then, nobody’s perfect…

The problem is, that not Everyone is split up into strictly Scientific or Religious parties. Sooner or later, Science would’ve gotten to the point where it developed a Genuine Respect and Sense of Wonder in the findings they make regarding the Universe and sooner or later, Religion would’ve gotten to the True Power and Complexity of the Creator that they worship, if it weren’t for Secular Humanism (I call them Skittlerians because they keep blathering on and on about their ‘rainbow’) that seeks to pick and choose from both groups without being beholden to either.

Skittlerians take the premise of Humanity being the Pinnacle of Creation from Religion and ties it to the capabilities that Science offers. But they do so without attaching the necessary responsibility and moral guidance that Religion offers or the full understanding of the consequences of piddling with Fundamental Forces in Nature that Science advocates. And they do so by denying simple Reality in the process.

Skittlerians take the concept of Love of Life from Religion, strip it of its True Meaning and Purpose and grants it biological legitimacy through Science, despite violating an already established mechanism that has insured close to 3 Billion Years** of Biological Success. Then they advocate that those who refuse to bow down to their Emotion, Rainbows and Butterflies are ‘monsters’ and are to be treated universally with shaming, hatred and disdain, all while preaching their mantra of ‘acceptance, love and non-bullying’.

Skittlerians take the notion of God’s Chosen People and World Devastating Power from Religion and gave it flesh and reality by accessing the Pure, Indiscriminate Fury of Atomic Power and Advanced Weaponry and advocate their use against technologically inferior cultures. They even complain about the mess it creates when it’s being used for ‘Good’ purposes. Fukushima ring a bell?

This 3^rd option to Science and Religion has told Nature and God to, “go sit on the bench, because WE think we can do better,” without accepting the horrible consequences of their actions. They’ve refused to accept that there are some Natural Limitations and Laws that you can’t and shouldn’t overcome because doing so results in an adverse side effect called ‘The Inevitable Extinction of Humanity’.

This way of thinking is destroying Life As We Know It and nobody seems to know or care. Science sees Secular Humanism as a method to generate public interest and government funding and Religion sees it as a means to support Mankind’s ‘inherent Supremacy’, so they’re both loathe to attack something that seemingly supports each group. Secular Humanism has been playing Science and Religion against each other for quite some time, knowing that, if neither side will put down their collective Egos or Skepticism concerning the other group and join Forces, then Secular Humanism will continue to survive and thrive, eventually supplanting BOTH schools of thought and eliminating any opposition to their creed.

And it’s already begun. Once you can get someone fired from their jobs or end their livelihoods for their expression of personal religious beliefs or opinions and can dictate which Science is ‘True’ and which isn’t, it should be abundantly clear that both Science and Religion are on their way out. Because, without an understanding and respect for Life and the Past, as both groups individually offer, how is Humanity going to survive long enough to have a Future? It won’t. And this is just another reason that Humanity is doomed.

*Evolution is a fun topic to discuss. And yes, I’ve read a great deal about the discussion. And no, I’m not going to discuss it next. I’ve got a game plan ahead of me and Evolution is further along in the game plan than where I’m at right now. Have patience.

**3 Billion Years if you want to use Scientific estimates. If you want to use the calculations of a 17th century learned man, that’s up to you. I’m of the opinion that if Life has survived for 3,000,000,000 years, it should be respected and honored FAR more than if it’s only been around for 8,000 years. One has more zeros, so it’s clearly more impressive.