From Hating Hillary For Being A Witch To Hating The Donald For Being A Bitch

"Do you think there was a kind of desire, to believe in a conspiracy of the liberal elite, all misbehaving in gross ways that ordinary folks could never think about?"

- Andrew Marr to Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer, David Schoen

"Certainly, rationality is beleaguered these days. This is one of the last major newspapers in the country not to publish a horoscope,...non-science, nonsense, the elevation of emotion over fact, is on the rise, whether it's the extraordinary faith in homeopathy or the voodoo economics of the neoliberal right or the healing power of crystals. To read here of Tony and Cherie Blair's rebirthing experience in a Mexican mud bath in 2001 is to be torn between contempt and hilarity. 

That our leaders for the past 25 years or so have been as cretinous as anyone else who believes there are fairies at the bottom of their garden is not exactly consoling. The powerful are protected from the consequences of their credulity; we are not."

- Nicholas Lezard, in a 2004 review for "How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions" by Francis Wheen

1988 - 2008 (Until Today): Screwing Up Everything - With Nothing In Their Way

Science Fiction Writer Isaac Asimov, 1988: "Humanity isn't rational, and somehow I don't think that I'm going to persuade many people to BE rational. Now, for instance, right now, once again they're talking about there being 'a wave of mysticism' that's taking over the United States. More and more people are interested in astrology and the NewAge,..."

The Insecure, Impulsive, Irrational Pain Of Vain America

Whites said big butts were ugly for most of my life:

Now they're the unnatural outgrowth of a sick society, facing the truth that it couldn't hide,...

Our White Society: Always Tackling The Important Issue

[Peter O'Toole, 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013, good guy) 

 Almost 150 years and, the more things change, the more they remain the same:

  "It was one matter to believe slavery wrong and want it abolished; it was another to know what to do with,...freed slaves. Most whites adhered to racial stereotypes that viewed slaves as docile and childlike or savage and uncivilized—either way, they didn’t want them as freedmen anywhere near them. Racism permeated the North,…Identifying the imperative question of the day, one minister in upstate New York asked in a sermon, 'What Shall Be Done With the People of Color?'”

I know what they've decided so far:

They'll let me know of any new decision, eventually, I'm sure,...

 

NewAge Is A "Spiritual Practice" (And They Do Practice)

She said:

"Why must an atheist bother with the subject of religion at all?"

As though atheists can ignore the religious' evangelical tendencies.

And, since we know this, who is actually deigning to "bother" whom?

And who - as usual - is "blaming the victim" here?

("Blaming the victim" - I am enjoying these Flaws In A Perfect System - our popular catchphrases for the casual cruelties Americans needlessly inflict.)

She said:

"If you think you're so rational, be rational about the reasons why people are religious, including many reasons that you could be empathetic about."

Oh my dear, you are aware the divorced are listening, aren't you?

Why aren't they - or, even better, their religious spouses - more emphatic?

Do you seriously think a fanatic is being rational, or even helping, when they're all "you think you're so rational" towards the subject?

Mocking the very endeavor society builds on - while insisting we must be empathetic towards the irrational - what does that reveal?

Didn't I just mention evangelism?

She said:

"By the way, even in that little quoted squib, the guy is still being a jerk, likening religious people to a brick wall and being a bit of a brick wall himself about the possibility that religious people are seekers of knowledge and truth."

"Seekers of knowledge and truth" - yeah, sure.

Having been there before, we know there is no "possibility that religious people are seekers of knowledge and truth" when they've always insisted - as you are right here - that batting away knowledge is the way to truth.

You are, once again, arguing for insanity and nothing more.

And doing so insanely.

And I even understand why - which is why it's my job to tell you:

Avoiding "being a jerk" is NOT what this is all about,...

 

The Right's Blogosphere: Experts On Yoga, Meditation, Quackery, Gays & Alternative Medicine (But No Blacks)

Did you ever noticed, while I've nailed them for promoting all kinds of useless garbage, The Four Horsemen of the Ablogalypse - Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, Steven Den Beste, and Charles Johnson - have never taken the subject of slavery's economics very seriously? 

“Slavery has been written off as part of the pre-history of our world. Contemporary capitalism was shaped by its rational brutality but the banks, insurers and speculators who facilitated and expanded slavery have been able to project their activity as unsullied by a cruel and racist system that was as systematic as it was functional.”

Well, to be honest, if you ask me - except as a scam on their countrymen - they've never took blogging very seriously either,...

 

Sorry, White People, My Bad: Racism's Too Exaggerated

I don't know what I was thinking, America. 

The liberals must've got to me.

Maybe - if we tone down the rhetoric - then, together, we can once again re-establish that "common ground" we used to have, regarding the issue of race, in America. I'll go first:

"A convenience store owner in Miami Gardens, Fla., installed 16 cameras in his Quickstop a year ago. The aim was not to surveil shoppers, but rather the police repeatedly harassing the store’s black workers.

One employee, 28-year-old Earl Sampson, has been stopped by cops 258 times in four years, searched more than 100 times and arrested 56 times. The most serious offense Sampson has ever been found to have committed throughout all these stops was low-level marijuana possession. He has even been stopped dozens of times by cops for 'trespassing' in the store where he works."

And they got it on tape:

So - we can agree "things are improving" now - yes?

 

Here's One From A Political Atheist: "I See Dead People"

Fucking PJMedia - from Roger Simon to Glenn Reynolds - is worthless. Look at this shit:

  "Progressivists break the laws of thought with impunity."

Yeah, and conservatives are being totally rational, as they "win by losing" while following idiots claiming to be "chosen by God".

If there WAS a God, he'd strike these imbeciles down,...

 

If You Think Politics Is A Game You're Doing It Wrong

Study: Facts Are Irrelevant To The Political Game

You Can Believe What You Want (But It's Time To Go)

"Heaven is a fairy story 

for people afraid of the dark"

Where'd The American Dream Go? Follow These Two,...

I Yam What I Yam & What I Yam Is A Yam (Yes, I Yam)

If they'd include the "spiritual but not religious" in the next study of this kind, it'd be very helpful:

Atheists tend to be more intelligent than religious people, according to a US study. 

Researchers found that those with high IQs had greater self-control and were able to do more for themselves - so did not need the benefits that religion provides. 

They also have better self esteem and built more supportive relationships, the study authors said. 

The conclusions were the result of a review of 63 scientific studies about religion and intelligence dating between 1928 and last year. 

In 53 of these there was a ‘reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity’. 

In just 10 was that relationship positive. 

Even among children, the more intelligent a child was the more probable it was that they would shun the church. 

In old age the same trend persisted as well, the research showed. 

The University of Rochester psychologists behind the study defined religion as involvement in some or all parts of a belief. 

They defined intelligence as the ‘ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience’. 

In their conclusions, they said: ‘Most extant explanations (of a negative relation) share one central theme - the premise that religious beliefs are irrational, not anchored in science, not testable and, therefore, unappealing to intelligent people who ‘know better’.

Like, to "know better" ever impressed a believer,...

 

Hallucinations: Imaginary Visions Don't Get Real Results

It's difficult to understand how plowing drug users with propaganda is supposed to work when, it's obvious, the thought processes currently flowing - from straight life - don't. Let's start with the obvious:

How is creating a society - filled with propaganda - supposed to make anyone want to live, much less, stay coherent? 

Are you kidding me? Do you see how far off the mark they were, whenever it first occurred to someone behind this clip to say, "Hey - I've got an idea!"? (All the, I guess, brilliant lawyer/professor Ann Althouse wondered, after seeing this, was "How'd they do that?") It's pretty obvious to most drug users what no one's addressing:

How coping - without drugs - is supposed to fix living with idiocy. 

For instance, there's a lot of religious nuts out there, of one kind or another, no more reasonable than your average drug addict. Did the existential problem they pose, somehow, go away because whoever made this "public service announcement"? Or, as the commercial depicts, did the creators conveniently think users would forget the existence they're stuck in, while watching this? (Really? It was considered that powerful?) Let's try something, few who make these things consider, and look at it all another way: 

Where's the commercial (and concern) for a fallen stoner friend who found an approved belief system but - as (wink, wink) his appearance improved and his mind sharpened - he increasingly used both to become popular as a rigid fanatic spouting nonsense about invisible beings who must be obeyed? 

See, now that's a common 1st World problem that people are dealing with. It needs addressing and, by doing so forthrightly and in a straight-ahead manner, you might make life more tolerable, allowing some users a clear pathway off drugs. 

Doing the one thing found, to make the incomprehensible tolerable, is irrational? Because you'll die? Life kills us all, sooner or later, so that's no argument.

Religion and drugs make life less than worth living, so they've both got you coming and going, but (the thinking goes) at least drugs give you something in return. There's a real incentive. 

Stop trying to scare people out of living - kill two birds with one stone: 

Fix a real problem and (most of) the imaginary go away, too,...

 

Head Like A Snow Globe (Turn Upside Down And Shake)

While re-reading the last post on Ann Althouse, I noticed another great quote I missed:

“Whenever I encounter someone who insists that he's purely reasoning about the issues and deciding everything rationally, I always wonder what's going on in his psyche that's given rise to his need to be seen that way.”

This is subversively confused "logic" at it's best. 

So - if someone doesn't want to be known as crazy and irrational - that makes the feminist question their motives (notice she refers to "his" psyche), but - as I learned after spending years over there - the crazy and irrational doesn't raise any red flags and has her full participation and support. 

 Again - Ann's a NewAger - with another example of how the NewAge "works"....