Vigilance

That we live in a state of corporate fascism (an idea recently explored by Amy Goodman and Ralph Nader) is, in my mind, axiomatic.

The idea is further explored in this article posted at CommonDreams.org exploring the identity between journalism and propaganda. Some good quotes:

Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all-and I believe that we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn’t true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn’t true of the United States.

In all the years I’ve been a journalist, I’ve never know public consciousness to have risen as fast as it’s rising today. Yes, its direction and shape is unclear, partly because people are now deeply suspicious of political alternatives, and because the Democratic Party has succeeded in seducing and dividing the electoral left. And yet this growing critical public awareness is all the more remarkable when you consider the sheer scale of indoctrination, the mythology of a superior way of life, and the current manufactured state of fear.

The year is 1984. But truth yet lives and breathes.

And the noosphere grows.

O for a muse of fire!

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. —Hamlet

I wonder if Hamlet believed in emergent properties. Are the properties of water predictable from its chemical composition? H₂O my!

Fundamental Stupidity

God: Who crafted time and space?

Fundamentalist: You did.

God: Who set the stars alight?

Fundamentalist: You did.

God: Who fixed the planets in their spheres?

Fundamentalist: You did.

God: Who designed all life on Earth?

Fundamentalist: You did.

God: How do you know all these things?

Fundamentalist: From your Holy Bible!

God: Who created DNA?

Fundamentalist: You did.

God: How do you know what DNA is?

Fundamentalist: Uh. . .

God: What is the Scientific Method?

Fundamentalist: The work of the Devil!

God: Why are you so god damned stupid?

Fundamentalist: Uh. . .

God: Do you think I am a moron?

Fundamentalist: I don’t understand.

God: And you never will.

As if God Gives A Rat’s Ass About Texas

The poor children of the State of Texas will daily be reminded indoctrinated that the Creator and Supreme Intelligence of the Universe (aka God) blesses not only their Nation but their Great State as well.

“Personally, I felt like the Texas pledge had a big old hole in it, and it occurred to me, ‘You know what? We need to fix that,’ ” said Riddle, R-Tomball. “Our Texas pledge is perfectly OK like it is with the exception of acknowledging that just as we are one nation under God, we are one state under God as well.” (Source)

I wonder how God feels about American Idolatry.

4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (Exodus 20:4)

And LO! For The Heavenly Host spaketh unto Me! And declareth God’s Great Anger! And made knoweth unto Me that, for their Hubris and In Expiation, our Great and Merciful Lord shall smite the insipid and idolatrous State of Texas! And He, in his Divine Mercy, shall wipe it from the Face of the Waters, and shall Bury it in the Great Caverns of the Earth!

When, you ask? Oh, sometime in the next, um, millenium.