One has to wonder…

I actually found myself listening to Van Morrison more than anything with any kind of bloops, blips and beeps, and Mirror Traffic ascended to its perch on top of my year-end albums list. I just wasn’t feeling the beats. So, I kind of missed a beautiful, mesmerizing gem of an album called Sepalcure by Sepalcure. I’ve been making up for it this week.

Scorsese’s Hugo is on in the other room and I can’t be bothered to watch it. Every time I stop watch, it looks beautiful, but there’s just something I can’t get past. Something about movies that are specifically made for children is wholly unappealing to me. It’s not easy to pin down, but something about the innocent sense of ‘wonder’ for the sake of being wonderful repels me deeply. Some cynicism, please.

I thought of this the other night while hanging out with my friend, Rich.I have one of those wooden banana holders that the bananas hang from, and I mentioned kind of self-mockingly that I’m more inclined to eat bananas if they’re hanging than if they’re just lying on the counter. I quarter-jokingly said that it’s because we’re descended from apes and we have a natural inclination toward hanging bananas because of that fact. It seems to make some sense. It’s at least kind of a tidy little comforting idea.

Blue, brown and white, but kind of an off-white. Great color combo. Pretty nice.

From extreme examples such as Muslim terrorists who wage Jihad on those who don’t believe in their bullshit, to Christian terrorists who threaten and murder abortion providers, the tendency for irrational belief structures to cause major problems for those who choose to follow different moral, spiritual or intellectual paths is too much of a problem for us to allow them to persist, no matter how ‘good’ it makes someone ‘feel’ to believe these fantasies.

The fact is, that we are quickly evolving beyond the need for imaginary deities to serve as the backbones for our existence. In that light, it’s no surprise that the religious are often opposed to rational, scientific, evidence-based explanations for phenomena. Such critical modes of thought are anathema to religious bull shit.

It is imperative that we continue to attack religion, as it is an enemy of progress in terms of both our human evolutionary consciousness and the betterment of our society on a day-to-day basis.

The reason is not that the government has legitimately deemed these substances as a threat, but because the deeming of them as a threat serves a greater purpose for the ruling class. By prohibiting substances which provide varying degrees of pleasure, the government ensures that a convenient criminal class will always exist, around which a complicated power structure can be erected and maintained. Thus, the goal of the drug war is solely one of exercising and building upon power – the power of the ruling class, which in a capitalist society happens to be the rich.

The war on drugs is, first and foremost, a class war. Sure, there are wealthy drug lords who, in extremely rare cases, are arrested and prosecuted, but, by and large, the people who are targeted by the government’s drug war are the underclasses.

The drug war should be a primary target of attack for those who wish to defeat the current societal power structure and topple the illegitimate regimes of control at the top of our societal hierarchy. Contained in the war on drugs is a veritable backbone of this power structure, and if it can be compromised, a significant battle has been won against the privileged elite whose goal is to perpetuate the enslavement of the masses in varying degrees (basically, whatever’s possible at any given time or place).

9. Unnecessary and Aggressive Militarism as a Cornerstone of our Foreign Policy – Conservatives love war, because it gives them something other than the imprisonment of poor black people to cheer for. It also gives them yet another excuse to adorn the American flag on their articles of clothing.

8. Pre-Enlightenment Attitudes to Science – Conservatives are apparently still upset that the world has been proven beyond the slightest shred of doubt to not be flat. They’ve been tirelessly striking out against scientific advancement ever since.

7. Environmental Degradation – Conservatives want nothing more than to see the environment raped and pillaged to ensure the continuing, unabated profiteering of polluting industries.

6. Religious Indoctrination in Schools – Because kids can’t possible learn scientific ‘theories’ such as God’s having willed the world into existence, unless their school day is filled with Christian prayer.

5. The Lie that America is a Christian Nation – Despite many of the founding fathers being deists, agnostics or at least only casually religious, conservatives want to maintain our status as a ‘Christian Nation’ founded on ‘Christian ideals’ even though the constitution was specifically worded to reject this notion.

4. Sexual Inequality – Conservatives reject the notion that there should be equal opportunity among the sexes. After all, the Bible clearly states that women should be subservient to men, and the bible is the foundational document of our republic, right?

3. Racial Inequality – Along with Christianity, this country was founded on slavery. If conservatives are no longer allowed to enslave those uppity blacks, well they can at least build prisons and mandate harsh sentences for things like drug offenses which target poor blacks in cities. It’s also a good idea to reduce or eliminate federal tax dollars going to inner city schools, because improving education in these places might reduce the degree to which the deck is stacked in the favor of rich white children.

2. Shaming of and Hatred toward Homosexuals – Let’s face it, gays are icky. I think that’s actually what Jesus was quoted as saying in the bible. If we allow gays to openly exist in our society, God is going to punish us with stubbed toes and other tragedies. We need to fight this immorality, because if Steve and Mark get married, the entire institution of marriage is doomed, and the fabric of society will unravel. It’s in the bible.

1. Economic disparity – Let’s face it. More than religion, discrimination against others and dark-aged attitudes toward science, what conservatives really lust for is the idea that, not only do some people out there have less than they do, but this very fact that they have less will ruin their lives. Conservatives ‘work hard for their money’ and don’t want ‘dead beats’ to get said money to do unimportant things like feed their children or take care of them when they’re sick. After all, it’s ‘unamerican’ to ask that millionaires pay a tax rate equal to that of lower income Americans, because those millionaires have worked hard to game the system and find tax loopholes with which to build their wealth on the back of our entire society. To ask some great American like Mitt Romney to actually pay his fair share amounts to socialism. It’s in the fucking bible.