Alive? Yes! Unconscience? As Usual!

We’re Alive But Unconscious!
By Joseph Walther


Some people, with little or no effort, become living confirmations of Soderquist’s Paradox: There are more horses’ asses than horses. I know that you’re all bubbling over with curiosity as to why I’d say something like this. Well, here’s why. I witnessed a number of things this past week and all of them support my opening statement. Let’s dive right in!

Last Monday afternoon I stopped to get something to eat at a local Burger King. Please understand that I’m not endorsing Burger King… well maybe I am in the sense that I considered it the lesser of several unappealing choices. I’m digressing, though. Let me get back to the point.

I arrived in the middle of a field trip lunch break for fifteen second, or maybe, third-grade kids. I have no idea where they had been or the name of their elementary school. From my 63-year old perspective, the teacher in charge looked to be all of about 15, but she was in charge and every one of these kids knew it.

I received my order and proceeded to a booth. There was a group of four children–a boy and three girls–in the booth behind mine. They were describing their various religions. One of the girls was Jewish. The boy was a Catholic. The other two girls were Methodists. A fifth child, a girl named Emily, who stated that she’s a “Pressteerien”, joined them. Their conversation was fantastic!

What they said is not important. How they said it is. These kids were relaxed, open, and totally non-judgmental with each other. As each of them spoke, the others listened. They respected each other’s viewpoint and accepted each other’s religion as nonchalantly as they accepted their respective hair colors or genders. I did not hear even one of them threaten to report the others to the ACLU.

For now, Soderquist’s Paradox does not apply to these kids. If they can maintain their mutual respect for each other, as well as their open attitude toward and acceptance of other religions, the paradox will never apply and who knows what great things could happen in the world as a result.

Unfortunately, reliable statistics tell us that 78% of the world’s population believes in a Deity. All of the adults who represent the various religious beliefs—Christians, Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Hindus, Buddhists, accordion players, harmonica players, and polka enthusiasts to name a few—should just chill. Like these kids, they should talk to each other in an open and nonjudgmental way. Fat chance of that!

Nevertheless, if we all did this, we’d find out that all of us, with the possible exception of the accordion players, harmonica players, and polka enthusiasts, are human beings, complete with hopes and dreams and that we have more in common than not.

Unfortunately, I fear that adult logic, much of which displays the emotional depth and personal maturity of seaweed, will overtake these children’s thought processes. Over the next ten to fifteen years, this youthful openness and acceptance will yield to the typical dogmatic “my God’s righteous and your God’s not” pissing contest that we’ve all come to expect from most of our religious leaders.

Moving on, I made it a point to listen to as much talk radio, local and national, as I could this past week. The national topics covered a myriad of subjects: immigration; the war on terror; same sex marriages; rotten, lyin’, stinkin’, baby-killin’ liberal scum; and those miserable, lyin’, stinkin’, sanctity of marriage savin’ conservative slime buckets.

The local topics were basically the same as the national ones, except that the local hosts included some local issues such as those stupid, lyin’, smelly (pick one depending on your political stance) liberal/conservative jerks that are sending all of us to hell in a hand basket.

Becoming more and more obvious are two other notable differences between national hosts and the local ones. The locals, in addition to having nothing of essence to say, also talk funny. For example, one of the locals on WILM kept pronouncing w-a-t-e-r as wooder instead of the common whater.

While most of the nationals seem to have broadcast quality voices that can articulate shallowness reasonably well, I listened to one of the locals on WDEL afternoon who spent two hours mindlessly running his mouth and sounded like he was speaking through his nose. He made up for is lack of social depth with an unbelievable level of pure-assed crankiness.

I don’t care what they are saying. I firmly believe that 90% of everything the national and local talk show hosts say, while sincere, is unmitigated and exaggerated bullshit. Its primary aim is to stir people up into a rage until they foam at the mouth. What IS amazing, at least to me, is the ease with which supposedly intelligent people let strangers dictate what should offend them, as well as WHEN to be offended.

Sincerely believing in the righteousness of an action does not make the action righteous. And, sincerity does not override stupidity, either. There is nothing more pathetic, and ultimately dangerous to freedom, than devoutly sincere, stupid people. “What luck for rulers that men do not think.” Adolf Hitler said this to some members of his inner circle during his climb to power in Nazi Germany.

Finally, since this is a mid-term election year, let me give you a few thoughts of mine regarding this country’s state of affairs. We have a lot of critical issues to deal with in this country. While they are too numerous to list here, I believe that we can solve all of them, over time, as long as we’re willing to face the truth and recognize blind, logically questionable dogma for what it is: blind, questionable dogma.

I have a list of non-problems that politicians love to elevate to the status of DEFCON-5. Here are my favorite three. Keep in mind that politicians will spare no expense to scale any molehill, no matter how slight, to solve non-problems.

First, the Social Security Trust Fund is NOT broke. It’s not even close. However, if we don’t stop the politicians from raiding that trust every time the pork barrel runs shallow, it WILL go broke. Second, no one has to protect the “sanctity” of marriage. We certainly don’t need a Constitutional Amendment. When two people base their union on mutual love, honor, respect, and commitment, it is just as sanctified as the more traditional, religiously accepted heterosexual unions. Third, the “war on terror” is a crock, just like its predecessors, the “war on drugs”, the “war on poverty”, and the grand daddy of them all: the “war to end all wars.”

None of those wars worked because we failed to understand nature of the causes. In the case of drug use, people use all kinds of drugs and for incalculable reasons, many of which are so endemic and complex that simple answers are impossible. Telling a ghetto kid, making $5,000 a week selling crack to addicts, to “just say no” does not work. It also makes the person who said it look quite dense!

Poverty is a fact of life in all societies, even communistic and socialistic ones. But, it’s particularly prevalent in capitalistic societies. Given that the human species does not annihilate itself beforehand, we might eradicate poverty at some point. It’s not going to happen at our current level of evolution, though. The idea that we could eradicate it within a short time span, however, is one of those idealistic frauds politicians like to banter around for votes.

Humans tend to become very cranky whenever they perceive a threat to their personal status quo. When “outsiders” raise personal threats to a level of national concern, whether the threat is real or not, we start rattling our sabers. Given the right mix of nationalistic fervor, combined with just the right amount of need to let off steam, we go to war. Even if humans annihilate themselves right now, the cockroaches will survive. And, 250,000 years from now Palestinian cockroaches will be Israeli cockroaches.

I’ve had a long and successful career. I’ve learned a few things in the 63-years I’ve been on this earth. For example, we elect those politicians who are the most expert at providing credible, popular frauds that the voters can believe in. Additionally, politicians always answer the questions they wish the questioners had asked instead of the ones that they actually asked. Worse, this practice has become blatant. As long as we permit these two conditions to exist, we’ll continue getting exactly what we deserve.

FDR was president when I was born. I’ve lived through the administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. I look forward to living though the rest of George W. Bush’s administration, as well as a couple more future administrations.

Please note that not one of these men was a saint, even though the conservatives have already canonized Ronald Reagan. Occasionally, each of our past presidents said silly things, some more than others. That’s why all of them have had a silly statement repair team. With the exception of the last two presidents, all of them knew when they said something silly and they let the silly statement repair team repair the damage as best it could so that we could all move on.

Not so with the last two presidents, though. Bill Clinton said silly things, knowing the entire time that they were silly and sometimes untrue. In fact, there were times, at least in his mind, when convenience was the imperative and truth was one of several options. This was undoubtedly true of his predecessors, but they all tried to be discrete about it. Clinton didn’t care about discretion. He was testing the waters to see how far he could go, knowing our collective gullibility. He was a fantastic “pain feeler” who could make people believe that he felt their pain, even from millions of miles away. We all fell for it, especially Monica.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, is a believer, as opposed to a thinker. It’s practically impossible to lie about what’s going on if you don’t know what’s going on. He has no clue that he says things that are not only silly, but downright stupid. He believes every word he utters and always has. Back in the day when he was drinking heavily, his words only reached the end of a bar. It was no big deal, though, because he was a good-natured, likeable drunk who bought lots of rounds. Everyone knew he was an idiot. But, hey, a free drink was a free drink!

To his credit, he’s overcome his alcohol-related demons. He’s the President of the United States now and the entire world hears his words. However, because he does not think before he acts on his beliefs, his words are every bit as silly and, more often than not, as stupid as they ever were. He, too, has a silly statement repair team. It’s a useless exercise though, because he does not realize silliness of his statements. Changing the official silly statement team representative doesn’t change anything.

God help Tony Snow. Also, if you hear an occasional rustling sound, along with what perhaps sounds like muffled sighs, it’s most likely Edward R. Murrow turning over in his grave.

Have a great week.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.