Babel (Serpent In The Garden, Four.)

I said, I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something wild and unruly
I wanna sleep on the hard ground
In the comfort of your arms
On a pillow of blue bonnets
In a blanket made of stars
Oh, it sounds good to me
I said, cowboy take me away
Fly this girl as high as you can into the wild blue
Set me free, oh, I pray
Closer to heaven above and closer to you
Closer to you
I wanna walk and not run
I wanna skip and not fall
I wanna look at the horizon and not see a building standing tall
I wanna be the only one for miles and miles
Except for maybe you and your simple smile
Oh, it sounds good to me
Yes, it sounds so good to me.
~The Chicks, Cowboy Take Me Away.

(Also in case you don't get the title.)

It talks about how in Genesis, under a ruler named Nimrod, the people...who all spoke one language...built a tower to try and reach Heaven. And God sent His angels to destroy the tower and confused the people's speech, creating the modern concept of languages and scattering the people across the Earth.

(And funny enough, like Flood myths, there are Tower of Babel-like myths in a wide array of cultures all across the world...just saying. Don't take my word for it, click the link.)

But what exactly does that mean when people don't understand their own fucking language?

I saw this earlier. Apparently Charlie Kirk is claiming that "Tall buildings make people liberal." Excuse me, what? 

This is a dead-on example of what I'm talking about when I say these people are Techno-Gnostic neo-Primitive Folk-religionists. They follow "gods" of fertility and tribe and war...and call them all "Jesus."

Some people are going to be real surprised how that works out in the end.

Apparently the concept of "Lots of different people live in cities and other large populated areas and they all have to manage to live together." Or that "Far-right 'Conservatism' and religiosity backed by racism is probably not the best way to go about that" is too complicated for some people.

It gets worse.

Apparently some people don't understand the concept of "Octane" or "Read the sign" or "Read the sticker on the gas pump." I learned this when I was like, eight and my Dad handed me the gas can and  couple bucks and told me to walk down to the gas station on the corner and fill it up with 87 Octane gas (and made me memorize that) for the lawn mower. And by a year or so later, because he lost his sight and his health wasn't good...I was the one cutting the grass.

How do people make it through life, apparently functionally illiterate/innumerate and not even knowing what words mean?

It really does seem to me like some people would be happier dancing around a fire and shouting Unga Bunga while they wait for the local witch doctor to come out of his cave. Civilization and our governmental system require competent people to make it all work. 

And people like the gas pump lady here despise those people for making it work.

I used the pull-quote that I did for a reason. I'm old enough to remember when conservatives still had at least some measure of acceptance of other ideas, imagination and some concept of happiness that didn't require it be at the expense of other people in some way.

Hell, I can remember when people like me weren't fond of the city because we actually appreciated nature and hated massive crowds of people.

(Oh, wait, I'm still like that, I'm just no longer politically or religiously conservative.)

I remember when being rabidly partisan for the sake of nothing more than the fight, or being small and mean or selfishly shitty most often meant everybody thought you were an asshole.

And I remember when open racism was not cool at all, and the covert kind less tolerated. Much less something like attempting to interfere with first responders or lifesaving services because of it.

I can remember when pretty much everybody understood that the battlefield, the sea, or the street doesn't care what color you are...it'll try to kill you just the same. Death is equal opportunity and the only color he cares about is red...blood red.

There's no "Colored" section in Death, ain't no segregation in Heaven or Hell either. I was taught we're all equally damned or equally saved in the eyes of God. There's no degrees, you are or you aren't. It's as simple as that.

As I've said before, the truth is simple. Man makes it complicated because he does not want to obey.

Maybe that's why These Fucking People have decided they love fascism and the complicated controls and systems of authoritarian Statism...or as it seems to be shaping up "Communism without the social welfare. You know, as I told a friend of mine today I never understood back in the day how the people who wrote books like the Left Behind series could see a country like America signing on to some kind of global hegemon. But now that I see there are Americans who would be just fine with having Vladimir Putin be the ruler of a conquered America...I get it.

I guess I just never expected that those same fucking people would gladly sign on to become the bad guys in their own story...for nothing more than a little power and racism.

Turns out Christians like Charlie Kirk could be bought even cheaper than Judas Iscariot.

And again, don't whisper this like the Serpent in the Garden, hissing sweet nothings into Eve's ear like it's some big secret. These Fucking People are doing their bullshit right out in the open. 

Shout it in These Fucking People's faces and start holding them to account, period.

We can't keep outsourcing the fight for freedom to the Ukrainians. It's that simple, we're going to have to stand up our own damn selves.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen, and that means showing up and voting, even when you don't like the choices.

Maybe that means you need to make better ones.

Part Three.

Whether one draws one's certainties from religion or science, in order for one to push back against Power one must have one's feet set on a hard floor of Truth, and one must have the freedom to build and to have and to maintain that foundation. This can only exist in the context of a democratic, pluralistic society. Now I don't give a damn if the truth one uses for this is Darwin's theory of Evolution or that God created the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh. People have to have this, and conspiracy theories, false doctrines, junk science, quack medicine and religious extremism are nothing more than shades of the same effort by forces of Greed and Power to undermine Truth on a conceptual level. ~Me

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For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27