I’ve been reading back through this blog, specifically my Liberal Rants, and 1) I write good; and b) it’s probably time for me to pick up my sword and once again do regular battle with the unfortunates who swarm our public discourse with their petrified, yappy-dog lack of understanding of the realities of life.

In checking my spam filter this morning, I was intrigued by this subject heading:

Elon Musk TERRIFIES Church Leaders!

PROOF INSIDE!

THE FINAL COLLAPSE, KENNETH!!!

What the hell are we talking about here?

The spam filter on this blog’s server out in California has an excellent option where I can go peek under the hood, so to speak, of an email without having to invite it into my inbox. What did I find under this particular hood?

Mercy. This is all so vague that I’m not at all sure what I’m supposed to be terrified about. Sure, AI is from hell and is going to drag us all back to the netherworld when it goes home, we all know that. But I have not seen any news or social media suggesting that it might target Xtians in some specific way.

Needless to say, I did not click on those links to the “short independent documentary,” even though it seems clear that The Great International Conspiracy to Be Evil is going to “take it down”… PERMANENTLY! So I guess we’ll never know just how dark and sinister this threat is until it engulfs us all, presumably starting with the Xtians.

Okay, so we can laugh at this feeble crap, but here’s the deal: the target audience for this is exactly this fearful. A lot of my other spam these days is from rightwing cesspools like BuildingOurMovement — and those emails are deliberate cluster-bombs of fear-inducing buzzwords to get the amygdala-based lifeforms riled up against, well, YOU KNOW.

Yes, you do know what they are getting riled up against: things they don’t understand and have no experience with — minorities, LGBQTIA, vaccines, SOCIALAMISM KENNETH — and they go and vote for the Big Strong Daddy who can SAVE THEM and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. The fact that they are voting for people who will let the rich and the corporations do whatever the fupp they want while the amygdala-based lifeforms find themselves without healthcare, pensions, roads, schools, or jobs — that never filters back to their brains.

I do not have a solution for any of this. Once an amygdala-based lifeform is duped, they cannot be unduped. All we can do is gently point out to them that crime is actually at its lowest in decades, immigration reform is possible, taxing the rich is necessary and good, gay people are just people, and this great nation of ours is the only industrialized nation without universal healthcare.

Light a candle for me as the election continues to ramp up and I will be forced — forced, I tell you — to write more Liberal Rants as the fascists continue slouching towards Bethlehem.

Today in 1659, Massachusetts Bay Colony executed two Quakers. For being Quaker.

Let that sink in.

This is the framework for those who screech that the United States was FOUNDED AS A CHRISTIAN NATION, KENNETH: The Puritans were not seeking religious liberty when they came to this continent — they were seeking a place where they could establish their own theocratic state. They had no intention of allowing anyone else to exist who did not follow their restrictive, mean-spirited dogma.

And this is what those who screech that the United States was FOUNDED AS A CHRISTIAN NATION, KENNETH actually want. They want to be able to tell everyone how to believe, how to live, how to exist. And they mean to expunge anyone who doesn’t believe as they do.

When I was a wee child, it was drummed into my head that Baptists had their beginning in revolting against this theocracy. Roger Williams established Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island) as a haven for actual religious freedom, allowing all faiths to operate freely. We Baptists didn’t want to be allied with the government, because we had seen the evil that came from that arrangement. “Be not of this world” etc etc. (It was also drummed into me that the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the establishment of a state religion because we didn’t want a situation like the Church of England — but I’m thinking it was just as much in response to the Puritans as the Anglicans.)

Baptists now? Not so much. Separation of church and state? BuT wE wErE fOuNdEd As A cHrIsTiAn NaTiOn, KENNETH!

Do not vote for these people, neither for Speaker of the House or for any other office.

I just finished reading James Shapiro’s The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, and I highly recommend it, especially if you are like me a huge fan of Lear.

A passage near the end jumped out at me:

[discussing the declining fortunes of the boy companies of London at the time] Another and now nearly fatal blow to [the Children of the Revels’] fortune came in November 1606, when they were ordered to stop recruiting boy players from among the ranks of child choristers, since “it was not fit or decent that such as should sing the praises of God Almighty should be trained up or employed in such lascivious or profane exercises.”

Well.

Here are some modern day choristers of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the same group that fed into the theatre company Paul’s Boys back in the day.

Who could possibly want to train up or employ these precious innocents in lascivious or profane exercises? Everyone’s moral alarms should be blaring CODE RED at such an idea.

Why, it’s outrageous — it’s disgusting — it’s… GROOMING, KENNETH!

Dale, I hear you ask, are you claiming that today’s handwringers and Moms for “Liberty” and rightwing screechers are pulling the same stunt as the god-bothering Puritans from 400 years ago?

Yes, yes I am.

That is a link to coverage of the high school in Fort Wayne, IN, that had its production of Maid Marian canceled because the god-bothering Puritans of that fair city objected to its LGBQT characters. LASCIVIOUS AND PROFANE, KENNETH! (The kids are all right: They rallied support and $84,000 to put on the play independently. The house was packed.)

I get it. The god-botherers have sincere religiousy beliefs about what is LASCIVIOUS AND PROFANE, KENNETH,^[1] and they are determined that the rest of us are not going to celebrate Christmas be anything but righteous, upstanding Puritans ourselves. Because otherwise… well, I’m not sure what they think is going to happen, other than that great fear of Puritans everywhere, that someone, somewhere, might be happy.

At any rate, they’re still wrong.

Happy Pride Month!

—————

^[1] I do not include the scum and villainy now known as the Republican Party as having sincere religiousy beliefs. Those people do not believe in anything except using divisive topics to scare the amygdala-based lifeforms into voting them into power.

Here, have a stupid: Bill Would Ban the Teaching of Scientific Theories in Montana Schools

You should go read the article — it’s not long — but you can probably guess what it says without clicking through. Some idiot in the Montana legislature has taken it into his head that we should not be infecting our children with mere theories about how the universe works.

No, insists our Big Sky State Gradgrind, away with these so-called theories; what we want is facts.

::sigh::

It’s pretty clear from the article that this nonsense isn’t going to make it out of committee, much less pass on the floor — opposition from teachers and students has been fierce, and I have to think that there are saner heads in charge. (I know, but let me have this fantasy.)

The sponsor of this bill is one Daniel Emrich:

He just got elected last November, and that is basically all that I can find about him on the intertubes. His campaign (barely) had a Facebook page last year, and it’s about as gooberish as you might think. I find it very weird that there’s nothing anywhere about his background, education, experience, or even just his marital status. It’s almost as if he’s trying to evade detection or something.

So it’s no surprise that this person is under the impression that a mere theory in science is just, you know, like, your opinion, man, and ought not to be taught in the Montanan schools as if it were anything close to being true. You know, like the theory of gravity or cell theory or germ theory. All just wild guesses.

From the article: “If we operate on the assumption that a theory is fact, unfortunately, it leads us to asking questions that may be potentially based on false assumptions,” Emrich said.

My wild guess is that Emrich is a christofascist who is by G-d going to make sure that the boys and girls in his state are not led away from the One True Biblical Truthiness by these radical liberal teachers who think that “asking questions” is a good thing. Why, it’s practically grooming!

Jebus, what an idiot. There is no common ground with this ilk. Their blinkered worldview will never allow them to see beyond the walls they’ve constructed around themselves, whether it’s scientific theories or LGBQT issues or social justice or universal healthcare or even the homeless in their community. They fear the world — they’ve been taught to fear the world — and their amygdala-based lifeform brains thrive on that fear.

Just the facts, ma’am.

I wish to make a complaint.

Prohibition ended in 1933. So why is it illegal for me to buy this gin?

Sure, if I walk into the General Store at Grand Canyon, I can buy it there, but I certainly can’t buy it at Kroger here, nor at any Kroger in the state of Georgia.

Not only that, even though Coweta County finally repealed Prohibition last year — 90 years late — and we are starting to get our first liquor stores now, I can’t buy it there either, nor at any liquor store that I know of.

Why is that?

I’ll tell you why: the Georgia Alcohol Dealers Association. Go read their page. They control what the liquor stores in Georgia can and can not sell. If Thumb Butte Western Sage Gin is not on their list, stores can’t sell it and you can’t buy it.

Not only that, but GADA is determined that you can’t buy it directly from the distillery either. (Go read their page!) The very idea of grocery stores having a liquor section gives them the fantods. PROTECT OUR PACKAGE STORES is their entire raison d’être — consumers be damned.

Why is this? These bottles are filled with legal substances. Why is it illegal for me to buy them? I need answers.

(I must give a tip of the hat to Rep. Matt Brass, who is otherwise a rightwing dinglehopper, for introducing multiple pieces of legislation to free us from all this nonsense.)

Yesterday this person was in line in front of me at the Kroger:

(image blurred for privacy)

His shirt says:

IN 1775 THEY TRIED TO TAKE OUR GUNS

WE SHOT THEM

Very patriot. Much brave.

Yes, you can buy these shirts, although there seems to be some confusion amongst the rabble about their exact precedents.

::sigh::

The American Revolution is not my time period, so I could be out of the loop on the latest historicity on the founding of our nation, but I do not remember the confiscation of weapons as being any part of the effort to break free of England. It was pretty much all about the self-governance thing, No Taxation Without Representation, et al.

If you needed an object lesson in how divorced from reality the right-wing nutjobs are today, here it is. They have concocted a fake national memory and are wearing t-shirts to advertise their deeply held religious beliefs in this fake memory. If I had asked this person to explain how and when “they” tried to “take our guns,” they would have blathered about the Second Amendment but they would not have answered the question. They would not have been able to answer the question.

More than that, they would not have known that they didn’t and couldn’t answer the question.

And here we are.

I, on the other hand, would have told him that perhaps he and his ilk were thinking of Shay’s Rebellion in 1786–7, when lots o’ muskets were confiscated after a group of disgruntled farmers and vets took up arms against the government of Massachusetts. It led semi-directly to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which led to the Bill of Rights, hence and ergo the SECOND AMENDMENT (MAY THE LORD JUST BLESS ITS HOLY NAME AMEN) KENNETH. (To be fair, I think those rebels had some cromulent complaints, unlike our current crop.)

But 1775? Nah. You just made that up, bubba.

Get a grip.

So this was on the Twittermaschine just now (#HoldTheLine was the trending topic), and I just…

Look, I know these people do not have a full command of logical thought, but this is just… I don’t know, velcro that doesn’t stick anymore? Brainworms? Unfortunate result of too much glue-sniffing?

Apparently #HoldTheLine is being used by those brave, brave souls who see mandates for vaccines as what they truly are: SUPPRESSION, KENNETH, OF OUR PRECIOUS BODILY AUTONOMY NOT NOT YOU LADY WHO WANTS AN ABORTION JUST US WITH OUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS.

Free — as we say — dumb.

Let me say up front that the Toronto Star probably shouldn’t have gone with this approach. Even though I agree 100% with the sentiments expressed, it nonetheless seems antagonistic.

However, Mr. Changizi the Unvaccinated’s reaction is stupid. The rest of us are indeed exasperated by the unvaccinated’s refusal to protect themselves and those around them, and yet somehow Mr. Changizi the Unvaccinated sees this as some kind of purge that we are doing to them.

Dude, no. It’s the other thing, the reverse of that. We’re doing everything we can to keep you from catching Covid-19 and dying from it, which is significantly more likely if you are unvaccinated.

He is not alone. Here is one of the responses to his tweet:

“Mass genocides.” “Never again.” Jebus H. Cthulhu. And brave, brave Winston Smith, standing up to Big Brother, who is even as we speak hunting down the unvaxxed in the streets of Toronto and hauling them off to the labor camps and crematoria of Saskatchewan I guess. Nor is he the only one who responded like this. There were dozens of people shaking their little fists in anger against this Holocaust they definitely didn’t make up in their heads.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Let me say it again for the hard-of-thinking: WE ARE NOT TRYING TO PURGE YOU IDIOTS. WE’RE TRYING GET RID OF THE VIRUS, and we can’t do that if y’all insist on refusing the vaccine because [reasons]. The more y’all get sick, the more likely it becomes that those of us who are vaccinated will suffer a breakthrough infection. Not only that, but the longer y’all remain unvaccinated, the more likely the virus will use its free access to your precious bodily fluids to mutate into yet another variant. You’re plague dogs.

Has our empathy for the willfully unvaccinated who are sick with this pernicious virus worn thin? You better believe it. At least we had empathy to start with, unlike your obvious lack of empathy for those who cannot get vaccinated because of health issues. But do we wish death on you? No. We wish you’d get vaccinated.

And maybe some mental health counseling.

Also too: The Sociopathic Style in American Politics