Greetings From Planet Earth

I haven’t been putting up anything substantive lately – I go by my own standards, so I decide what has substance, what doesn’t. Lately I’m not much into deep thought. After all, it’s the political season, and we are surrounded by stupidity as the candidates try to gain the votes of those people who pay the least attention, who are most susceptible to the 30 second sound byte. It’s rather discouraging.

Do check this out – there’s a good deal of heat and not much light, but it was fun. Carol and Friends at Missoulapolis are defending Sarah Palin, well, sort of, and get this – Carol thinks that Barack Obama, who was a highly accomplished student who graduated from Harvard Law School Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude and who edited the Harvard Law Review, might be the beneficiary of affirmative action. I think that might be a tad racist. Further, she thinks his degree is “mushy”.

I pointed out Sarah Palin’s academic credentials to help the grasp the high absurdity of this:

In 1982, Sarah Palin enrolled at Hawaii Pacific College but left after her first semester. From there she transferred to North Idaho College, where she spent two semesters as a general studies major. From the community college she then transferred to the much larger University of Idaho for two semesters. During this time Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant beauty contest, then finished third (second runner-up) in the Miss Alaska pageant, at which she won a college scholarship and the “Miss Congeniality” award. She then left the University of Idaho and attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska for one term. The next year she returned to the University of Idaho where she spent three semesters completing her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.

Mush, doggies. Mush!

It gets better. Her grades are not available.

You can’t make this stuff up. This is what we have become. This is who they admire.

I know what it is – I know why the dense stupidity. I can be frank here – this is a blog and we bloggers are not accountable. It’s the fundamentalists. They are not smart people and are easily fooled, easily led from point A to point B by any charlatan who claims to be one of them. The reason why they are so enamored by Palin is that she thinks the planet is 6,000 years old, that people walked with dinosaurs, and that a man who made his name by assailing people he accused of witchcraft is a good role model. (That’s her pastor, Thomas Muthee.)

These people are of low intelligence, and they are such an important part of the Republican Party’s voting coalition that the party leadership, who are not stupid, have to throw them a bone. Sarah Palin is that bone. She’s nothing more. She’s nothing. But they are circling the wagons around her.

I spent some time in the mountains this past weekend, and had a chance to read the words of a wonderful cynic with better-than-average writing skills, Mark Twain. The following passages are from Letters From the Earth, where the narrator is Satan, and he is enthralled by us:

This is a strange place, an extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the “noblest work of God.” This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.

Moreover — if I may put another strain upon you — he thinks he is the Creator’s pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affront, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance. I must put one more strain upon you: he thinks he is going to heaven!

He has salaried teachers who tell him that. They also tell him there is a hell, of everlasting fire, and that he will go to it if he doesn’t keep the Commandments.

In America, our base Christian fundamentalist instinct has ebbed and flowed. These are not unusual times. We have had Great Awakenings in the past, and Christians have spilled over into our public lives. It is never good – they are not a force for good. Underneath their pieties and preaching lay an ugliness. They want control. They want the reins of government, and when they have it, they will quash the one thing that bothers them most: personal freedom.

Fundamentalist Christians are dumb, and Republicans have had their way with them. I take solace in their dumbness, and would fear them even more if they were smart. As it is, they can do great damage in their ignorance, but at least it can be said that most of them are not malevolent. They are just misguided fools.

Have a nice day!