In defense of Saint Milo...

He has better hair than Trump?

Oh, come on, who the fuck am I kidding? I couldn't even type that with a straight face.

No, seriously. I want you to take a look at something with me. We're going to take a look at a favorite Evangelical/Fundamentalist chapter of the Bible, kind of in chunks. Please bear with me.

Romans 1King James Version (KJV)

1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,

2 (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)

3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:

5 By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name:

6 Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ:

7 To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.

9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers;

10 Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.

11 For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established;

12 That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.

13 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.

14 I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.

15 So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

See that last bit? Multiculturalism, it's in the Bible, folks.

But seriously, this section right here lays out the Pauline framework that overlays much of modern Christianity, meaning that it's a religion about Jesus rather than an effort to emulate the conduct or teachings of Jesus. Still, this section has to be fired for effect, as it's basically the kind of framework and requirements I was brought up with in terms of doctrine.

We'll come back to this later, it's important.

17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

OK, as the last section laid out the case for Paul's missionary journey to Rome (Sorry, can't help it, most of the Biblical exegesis I've been taught sets Romans up like Paul is a lawyer making his case in court. Like I said, bear with me for a moment) this section lays out the spiritual requirements for what he is trying to accomplish with said journey. In shorter, non-Elizabethan English, what Paul is basically saying here is ya'll have seen the evidence. Now you're supposed to act. (That the 'Evidence' Paul provides basically boils down to "Because I said so" is also important and indicative of the authoritarian nature of the Pauline framework, but that's another article for another time.)

Now, where was I, ah yes...

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Consequences. Can't have the Pauline, nor the Evangelical nor Fundamentalist interpretations without consequences...which is funny in a way. We'll shortly get to why.

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

This is kind of self-explanatory but:

'Why Do I Have to Repent or Ask for Forgiveness If I Am Not Making Mistakes?' ~Donald Trump

This is just one example. The traditional Christian doctrine of Original Sin states that all human beings inherit the sins of Adam and Eve. Effectively making Sin a part of the human condition, and as Trump should know from his own actions, we all have the capacity to commit evil to do wrong. That is what Sin is. If Trump has the vast depth of experience with mainline Christianity going all the way back to Reformed (Presbyterian) minister Norman Vincent Peale, that he claims, he shouldn't need to be told this and as Reformed theology is the modern incarnation of Puritan Calvinist theology then the concepts of Sin and Repentance should not be foreign to him. Yes, yes I know, Norman Vincent Peale is more known for "The Power of Positive Thinking" than his ministry but the point remains. If you fail to communicate the theology you're attempting to teach properly, from a spiritual standpoint the Bible says you get to own it when the people you taught miss the mark.

I didn't make the rules, but effectively it's a spiritual version of Command Responsibility. You are responsible, therefore it is important to teach the Truth.

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

I have literally seen several articles with my own eyes where people said that Trump was a god. I imagine he'd fail at the "Make your own Earth" test if God put him to it, though, just sayin.'

(Make your own Earth test: An example my friend Tim Wong came up with for a theological argument we were having with somebody, wherein a person claimed to be divine by large numbers of people or their self is at the moment of crossing over into the Afterlife transported to a place of nothingness by God and given six days to conjure a world from it.)

24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,

30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Funny thing but several of these last verses read like an alt-right Nazi manifesto. Which brings me to the subject of my smart-ass title, Milo Yiannopoulos or as I prefer to call him (simply because I detest the man) Milo the Fag. See, here's my thing, if you're a gay person who doesn't believe gay people should have rights...well then, I'll do you a favor and treat you the way you want other people like you treated. Fuck you. Milo said some dumb shit about Pedophilia and in defense of pedophiles and that perhaps sounded more like something an unusually candid member of the Taliban might say (that is, that it's perfectly fine to use boys sexually for pleasure, which it is in Afghanistan...but we ain't in Afghanistan.) Then he followed that up by saying that he sucked dick better because of a Catholic priest. 

Ironically, before this he was scheduled to speak at CPAC 2017 (CPAC = Conservative Political Action Conference) before all this got out. Now as I've said a dozen times this week all the old Republicans I used to know would have had some words for Milo and "Conservative" wouldn't have been one of them. They'd have called him a faggot and told him to get the fuck out. Why? Because there was a time when most Republicans understood that small-"c" conservatism was never going to be an edgy or popular philosophy, and even when they did have popular (more Movement Conservative for example) leaders like Ronald Reagan, they also understood that some things were not done in the better places. They understood that sometimes the price one might pay for popularity could be too high. Fascists, Misogynists, Nazis, racists and reality-show freaks usually fell into the category of "too high." I was taught to treat gay people the same as everybody else, but a lot of people weren't.

Anybody here read the Left Behind Series? For the record, they're some truly awful books, although they have their moments in a few spots. One thing that always bothered me about those books was the author's bad stereotyping and shitty treatment of gay people, minorities, non-Christians and women. The last of those books that I read (a good portion of it in Borders books in Traverse City, MI during several hours in the book store on my first date with my ex-wife) was called The Indwelling. One of the characters in that book was this dude, Guy Blod, who was a bad stereotype of a flaming gay artist. That's when I gave up on reading those books because I thought LaHaye and Jenkins were just mailing it in. Honestly, Milo the Fag meets Robert Mappelthorpe would probably describe the character better than this but I'll still link to it to describe the situation. The difference of course being that Robert Mappelthorpe had issues but probably wasn't that bad of a guy, and while I thought his art sucked, conservatives still occasionally bring him up like it was the worst thing ever. A lot of their animus against the National Endowment for the Arts comes from his work appearing at an NEA funded event back in the 1980's.

...And now an online equivalent who's also basically a Nazi is a conservative darling??

Fuck you, conservatives, this shit is indefensible.

...Into a far country.

As I've said before, my basic theory about the whole Trump thing is that it stems from three things, belief in life as a zero-sum game, fear of death and fear of the Other, which manifests most often as Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism more generally.

Increasingly, though, I see another variable at work here which feeds into, but is also fed by those three variables...

Matthew 25King James Version (KJV)

25 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:

4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

7 Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.

9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

11 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

12 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

13 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

"Watch ye therefore, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh." to quote Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption, is my favorite short version of this. While the guards are conducting a shakedown of the cell block he lives in, the Warden asks Andy what his favorite Bible verse is. Of course as Red, narrating, goes on to explain; the Warden simply wanted to take the measure of Andy and see what he was made of, how he held up under pressure.

This parable is relevant to me in other ways, though. See, I spent the majority of the latter half of the 1990's as a member of the End Times Prophecy Movement. If there even IS a source that could be pinpointed as to why American Christianity has a lot of the problems that it currently does, I'd start there and for that matter, I'd start then, also. See, just to take one modern issue (which is particularly on my mind on this 60F February day) Climate Change; For a large percentage of the time I was in that movement the El Nino climate phenomenon in the Pacific and its potential effects were on everyone's mind. It bears the name that it does because it was so named by mostly-Catholic Peruvian fishermen, and it usually reaches its peak around Christmas. So, at that time with anxiety about the turn of the Millennium also being a thing...Climate Change was viewed as a sign of the End Times.

But, now that Climate Change is more coming into effect, and regulations to combat it threaten to put a small dent in the short-term profits of Oil companies...well let's just say if you weren't a member of the End Times movement at the same time that I was...you'd never know Climate Change was once seen as both a fact and a *Good* if only because climate changes form an integral part of the later Judgments of Revelation and those things starting to happen in the real world could point in that direction. But, a lot of right-wing Texas oil billionaires have extensive ties to Christian Fundamentalism and they give preachers money, You can do the math on how that one turned out. I have faith in you, the reader.

Nowadays, not only with Climate Change, but with damned near every other Environmental issue (Unless it happens to affect them directly) most conservative Christians of most stripes will say "But God promised He would not destroy the world." That's bullshit for quite a few reasons but it starts and ends with the fact that God never said that Man could not turn around and destroy it on his own, so I'm just going to leave it at that.

Like I've said for several years now, I really feel like if he were to arise tomorrow, all the AntiChrist of Revelations would have to do is go on FOX News and say a few vaguely Conservative and religious-sounding words and promise to "Get" Obama in some undefined way, and all too many American "Conservatives" would be ready, willing and able to listen to what he had to say. Throw in a little racism, maybe a cameo appearance in Donald Trump's carnival show with a golf outing at the "Winter White House" selfies with the rich and some vague talk about a war in the Middle East and these people would be lining up 'round the block to take the Mark of The Beast. No. Questions. Asked.

Not one single one. I'd literally bet my life on it.

The right-wing side of American Christianity has been so gas-lit by its Politicians and Professional Christians and its religion has become so intertwined with its politics and divorced from the actual teachings contained in the Bible that these people simply do not care. The End justifies the Means. Jesus could show up to do it all over again, and preach verbatim out of the King James Version and do exactly the same things the Bible says He did back in the day, and the result would be the exact same. If He hung out with the gays and immigrants and the liberals and the sinners, maybe helped some homeless people or used His skills in the building trades to install some solar panels on an old lady's roof, not to mention called them on their bullshit? These fucking people would not only make a hashtag of #CrucifyHim, they'd shout it in the streets and blow up the E-mail and voice-mail inboxes of their state governments and federal representatives and Senators and they'd call Jesus a terrorist and seek to have Crucifixion no longer considered cruel and unusual punishment in cases of Theological Terrorism. If you can't, for example, see John Roberts, Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan asking Jesus "What is Truth?" at His trial, then you haven't been paying attention.

I say this with absolute certainty. If Jesus Himself asked these fucking people to go home and rethink their lives? They'd happily throw Him under the bus and make a new religion of Trumpism, Bigly.

Everybody wants change, seems like a lot of people don't want to change. But, that is what God asks of us. Every day we are supposed to die to Self, pick up our Cross and follow Jesus. That's what I was taught, anyway. Preach that straight up these days, and somebody will likely call you a Communist. Yes, We're talking about a threat that hasn't even existed for almost 28 years now. (Come on, even the Chinese and the Cubans and the Vietnamese aren't really Communists anymore.) That's how unwilling we as a nation are to give up a little, maybe evaluate some new information, think of others, and just maybe follow or be a part of something greater than ourselves. We'll hang on to something that's been dead longer than Ronald Reagan, just to justify our bullshit.

We're not watching to see if the Son of Man is coming, hell, we lost the plot on that when the whole Y2K thing fizzled out.

14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.

15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.

17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.

18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money.

19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.

20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.

21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.

23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:

25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:

27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.

28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This. If the guy with one Talent isn't Conservative America right now, I don't know how the hell to describe it.

If you really look at it, a hell of a lot of the things these people are against actually contribute more to our system than they take out, whether it be the Affordable Care Act, Food Stamps, Gay people (I mean, come on, what does someone loving who they want to really cost anybody else at all?)Immigrants (both legal and illegal, and if you don't believe me on that score read this) Medicare, Minorities, Muslims, National Parks, Refugees in general (and often, refugees from places like Iraq and Syria in particular, I know of a number of cases of Iraqi refugees joining the Army or the Marine Corps, for example. Syrian refugees have already had a small but notable positive effect in Canada) Social Security and all sorts of various other things Actually put one HELL of a lot more to the US economy than they take out. This isn't my opinion talking, SNAP, the Federal program that governs food stamps, generates $2 in the US economy for every $1 that is put into it. Medicare and Social Security don't just support old people, they put a hell of a lot of that money right back into Florida real estate, FOX News and the health care industry along with all sorts of other things that old people need or want to have.

But no, it costs each person a few dollars in tax money or exposes them to something new or forces them to deal with people they don't like or has some degree of inconvenience or threatens their personal "bubble" or somebody they don't like is responsible for it...so it can't be good and it has to go, right? RIGHT?!?! If we don't like it, it has to be banned! If somebody else gets more freedom, I have less, right? RIGHT!?!?!?!?!

32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Wrong. Either you believe in an All-powerful, eternal, infinite God who created an infinite Universe that even now stretches out into eternity, or you don't.

That is demonstrated in how we see the world, and right now to paraphrase Margaret Weis in the notes from the margins of the condensed volume of the first three Dragonlance books, the average American Conservative thinks that God is a blind man at the bottom of a very deep well who thinks the Universe is six feet wide.

...And, having Created god in Their own image, these people feel the same way.

Reality is a thing, people. Truth is a thing. We each will be judged someday, and the color of your skin or your politics or religion or social status won't have one damn thing to do with the results.

How you handle Truth, will.

Whether you act out of love or out of hate, will.

Whether you believed the Apocalypse was your Tribal revenge fantasy, or a great outpouring of justice where Judgment ran down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream, will.

Life is not a zero-sum game, death *Is* a part of life and so are other people.

After all, we wouldn't have all these diverse people with their many and varied beliefs and all this stuff that we have if God had not created it or given Man the scientific knowledge and the tools and somehow or other authored the physical laws that make them work, now would we? This stuff doesn't work by magic. God gave us the Sun, and gave Man the capability to make solar panels that turn sunlight into electricity, now why the hell aren't we taking full advantage of something that God gave us?

Well, you can't make as much money if you go by the Truth, now can you?

God had quite a few things to say about that very issue, and that is who these people are really afraid of. That is exactly why they believe life is a zero-sum game and fear death and fear having their beliefs challenged and fear other people.

That is exactly why these people act as if the Universe is six feet wide. They can't face the concept of Eternity, because their own mentality makes them small. It's drilled into everyone in Western Civilization, everyone who is influenced by the Abrahamic religions, that each of us will be given our eternal place in the afterlife based on how we have conducted ourselves in this one, and for most of us this starts before we are old enough to process it so it gets hard-wired in. All the evasions and technicalities don't get taught until later. They value this life, because they fear eternity.

They don't want to use their talents because the Master is a hard man. That's what Man will always come back to, fear.

But we're supposed to use the things we have been given, and when we can, use them to help other people. If everybody did that, all the time, then the government wouldn't have to step in and do it for us so that some could resent having to pay for it. That comes down to the fear that somebody else is getting something, and you're not.

We are supposed to be better than that. No one said it was easy, fuck easy.

How we treat other people, is how Christ will judge us.

...And at the end of the day, that is exactly what they are afraid of.

Luke 6:31King James Version (KJV)

31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Pale Blue Dot.

27 years ago, on February 14th, 1990, a remarkable photograph was taken. It was the culmination of a decade worth of effort by astronomer and author Carl Sagan with the support of many NASA personnel including the agency director, Richard Truly. The photograph was simply an image of Earth, as taken from the Voyager 1 Space Probe, then beginning the process of exiting the Solar System. The photograph was taken from over 40 Astronomical Units (an Astronomical Unit/AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun) away. The Earth appears as a small blue dot in the middle of the closest band of light (itself the result of scattering of light off the camera's sun-shade) and takes up less than a pixel of the image. That's us, just a small dot of blue against the dark vastness of space.

Think about it, human beings...Americans...launched the Voyager 1 space probe 40 years ago (in 1977) and sent it to explore Jupiter (1979) and Saturn (1980) and their moons before taking this picture in 1990, and the Probe would go on to support observations of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter in 1994.

NASA Scientists designed the command sequences and and did the calculations and coding, sent it to the spacecraft over the course of several hours, panned the cameras to compensate for the probe's speed (over 40,000 miles per hour) took the photo and then waited several hours as bit by bit, pixel by pixel, the image was relayed to Earth via the Deep Space Network.

This photograph was not intended to have scientific merit, but simply to show our place in the Universe.

As Carl Sagan himself described it:

We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

[...] To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

— Carl Sagan, speech at Cornell University, October 13, 1994

Why is this important? It's very simple, really. This was a great accomplishment.

This operation was done with a Republican president in the White House, there was conflict in the world, hell the Cold War was still winding down. We still found the time to take on a challenge for no better reason than because we could do it, to demonstrate nothing so much as our own human frailty and smallness against the vastness of the Universe.

It takes a strong and confident nation to do that.

When this was done, America absolutely was great.

What changed?

Fundamentally, One of my biggest problems with our society right now is a whole we're not doing much more than going to work and getting paid. We're not even thinking ahead, as a whole. We think in terms of the next Quarter, the next quantifiable period with numbers attached, etc. We need to think bigger. Seriously, Think about the amounts of money that could be made, new fields of technology opened up, etc. if we as a nation much less humanity as a species set our sights on going to Mars...never mind well and truly reaching for the stars. 

There's literally resources we can't even imagine out there, adventure and wealth enough to be had to fill the dreams of the most amoral pirate capitalist to overflowing, if only we made up our mind to go out there. That's what gets me is just how *Small* these people think, as personified by Donald Trump and his cabinet of Billionaires. If we'd apply ourselves the stars could be within our reach in a generation or two...we could rise to the literal heavens. We could, to paraphrase Melville, seat ourselves Sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and that would be just a start. But, some people at and near the top of this train-wreck we currently call a society would rather that we stay here and kill each other while we run out of stuff. 

We have people who would rather sell out our country to the Russians, or rather see it burned to the ground, than see gays or liberals or minorities or non-Christians or women or whoever else disagrees with them get an equal share of this one decent-sized patch of that little blue dot in the vast blackness of space.

Look at that, look at it really, go ahead and explain to me how ANY of that makes any damned sense, and why you think we should throw away all that we have, on the altar of one man's bottomless ego. Oh yes, that is what will happen. There is no greatness in someone so self-absorbed. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Go ahead, Take your time, show your work, I'll wait.

Republicans...The picture that is the entire basis for this post happened on YOUR watch...and now various coders, hackers and other volunteers are having to back up Climate Change and Earth Science data (and are beginning to do the same with biological, cultural and other scientific information already) because of the current right-wing aversion to facts, reality and science. Ya'll can do better than that and you Damned well know it.

Facts, reality, science and truth do not go away simply because we refuse to save the data or because we refuse to talk about them.

Look at that picture, and go right on ahead and tell me how corporate profits or pissant human ideology or religion matter worth a shit in the grand scheme of things.

No matter how much money this or that rich person makes, you'll never be able to see it from 40 AU away.

The vast blackness of space that takes up all but 0.12 pixels of that photograph, on the other hand? That's a literal, scientifically-testable concept of Eternity right there.

Whether God exists, I cannot say with certainty. I *Believe* that He does, but my Belief does not equal Fact.

But Eternity, facts, reality and truth are testable things. I choose, based on my Christian upbringing and Church background, to believe that God exists. Therefore, I have faith.

I have enough faith in God to understand that my faith in Him need not be threatened by other views. I have enough respect for facts, reality and truth, hell,,,for myself...not to believe in conspiracy theories and silly bullshit.

Seat thyself Sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod's carpenter was no duplicate;

~Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter CVII, the Carpenter.

We all inhabit a pale blue dot in the vast blackness of space, sharing our immediate solar system with eight other planets, but surrounded by uncounted and uncountable stars. All of us, whatever our color or creed or race or religion or station in life are much alike, because we are all human beings. But we are each one unique, each one having felt the touch of the Creator whether He is known or knowable or unknown or even whether or not we accept His existence. We are endowed with a mind, and a soul, and can be each one made new if we so desire to be. We each have charge over our own souls. We all have some control over our circumstances. Only we, at the end of the day, can define ourselves.

Take a look up at the night sky, lose yourself in the wonder of it, and come the light of dawn, choose to start again, with courage and with hope.

The future, and whether or not we will ever rise to touch that Eternity that hangs over our heads every night, depends on it.

Together we rise, or none of us do.