“The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” Chicken Little’s famous phrase of impending catastrophe sums up rather well the current upswing in citizen unrest mostly among our conservative population. But that isn’t the phrase that is being bandied about. No, instead, “socialist”, “Big Brother”, “Russia”, “death panel”, “rationing”, “deficit”, “choice”, and “control” are all mentioned right before somebody inevitably states or shouts “We want our country back!”

Can anyone explain to me what that even means? Who is the “we” in this case and in what state would they like the country returned to them? There are, of course, a few takes on that. One take says that the “we” are conservatives who want the country returned to them from the liberal power that has taken hold. Another is that the “we” are people uncomfortable with the changing racial topography of this country and that power needs to be returned to supposedly trustworthy caucasians. But I don’t really buy either of those. I am of the opinion that “we” represents a population that feels it no longer has any power over its own governance and that returning the country to them means that they all get to do things the way they best see fit.

Since within every “we” there are a lot of “I”, that basically boils down to anarchy since we all see the world differently. Now is a time when conservatives feel particularly powerless due to the heavily shifted balance of power in Washington, the rapid and overbearing reawakening of liberal media, and the heavy reality that their lives are not in their own control when it comes to national issues like the economic downturn. People are scared and feel helpless, and they are choosing to blame people other than themselves for all of these problems (and are right to do so in some cases). But the bottom line is that a portion of this nation is feeling victimized in a way that was once reserved only for gays, blacks, and women.

Conservative caucasians are not used to feeling victimized. They are typically full of righteous vigor and go through life pretending that absolutes abound, that black and white are the only choices while shades of gray be damned. While I would rather not start down a tangent, I will offer forth the idea that a majority of that population fervently holds to the ideal that there is no middle ground between good and evil. You are either one or the other. This is a convenient carryover from Judeo-Christian dogmata.

On top of that, we as a nation have steadily increased our sense of personal entitlement over time. We fear immigrants because they will take “our” jobs. We erupt into violence on the roads because somebody was slowing us down or in our way. We do away with reasoned debate because our opponent does not share our opinion or have our interests at heart. We will not stand for anything that impacts our convenience, our freedom, our choice, our family, and our belief that we are the most important person in our life. Oddly, we refer to the 1980’s as the “me” generation. It was so only because of the money people showered upon themselves. What we have now is worse. We have a “me” society that permeates every facet of our lives. We have a “me” country that believes it knows best in all circumstances and closes itself to the education that is an open mind and the willingness to learn from others in this world that have a longer history and greater experience.

As the saying goes, “We are number one!”

It is important to understand all of this when talking about the current climate of antagonism over health care reform. The town hall eruptions have almost nothing to do with health care, insurance, and services. They have a lot to do with a population choosing to assert power for the mere purpose of asserting power.

Why do I say this? I say it because the arguments against nationalized/socialized/tax subsidized health care make little sense. And I also say it because if these very same people were given the free market they so loudly demand, they would quickly see the role government plays in working to protect the welfare of its people.

“Choice” is a common argument. Choice of doctor, choice of treatment, choice of death. Well, okay, not that last one, because conservatives have always rallied against allowing people the choice to die (aka assisted suicide). What they fear now is that government will not give them the choice to live by denying them services at crucial times. Where would they get such an idea? From Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, actually, who pretty flat out stated that when deciding between health care for an infant, a young adult, and the elderly, the young adult should get priority since they are guaranteed to contribute to the ongoing health of the commonwealth. I have to concede that’s a very valid concern given Emanuel’s advisory position in the Obama administration. However, the guy isn’t all bad.

Choice of doctor seems like less of a concern. Every program in which I’ve participated has dictated which doctors I can and can’t see. They’ve done this by ratcheting the coverage depending on whether or not a doctor was a participant in their system and was willing to accept lower compensation in exchange for increased access to the patient base for that insurer. If every doctor accepts nationalized insurance, it would seem to me that choice would be expanded. I’ve not yet seen any indicators that the plan is to dictate which doctors you can see, nor have I seen mention regarding by which criteria such restrictions would be determined.

Choice of treatment boils down to what the reform bills contain regarding the system for approving treatments. Unfortunately, everybody has been shouting so much that we’ve not actually gotten any information about these types of details. That’s what the town hall meetings were for, but as usually happens, people who go in angry stay angry and come out angry.

The choice to participate is paramount. It is important that any national plan does not come by way of abolishing private insurance. We must always maintain the choice to get our coverage elsewhere, but we can do so without denying others the benefit of a national pool of contributors.

“Socialist” has been a favorite word since the start of the Obama campaign and has built enough steam to solve our oil dependency. Here is one of those places where we run into the problem of absolutes mentioned earlier.

There are many forms of socialism, but when we as a nation say “socialist”, we’re basically saying “communist”, which is why it is often followed by mentioning Russia. We have a good 60 years of anti-communist fervor in us, so when we hear of anything run by the state as being a “social” program, it gets bounced back as being socialist. To be fair, the proposed national health care system is a socialist form of insurance. It takes money from the production of the entire populace via taxes and then distributes that money to benefit the entire citizenry. Here are some other similarly “socialist” programs: welfare; unemployment; social security; Medicare. Suppose we throw those socialist babies out with the bathwater and eliminate those programs. Is that what people want when they say they want their country back? When I see the photos and footage of the town hall meetings, filled with a frothing older generation, I have to wonder - how many of them are benefiting right now from Medicare and are willing to admit to the hypocrisy?

I challenge everybody who is repeating the anti-socialist mantra to turn away their government checks and benefits. You obviously believe that everybody should fend for themselves, so get to it. I also challenge them all to learn about modern social democracy and how it differs from the all-out socialism they keep picturing in their heads.

Fear of the collapse of capitalism lies behind the rage against any form of social policy, which I find infuriating. A purely capitalist free market has been proven to work against the interest of consumers. There’s a reason why we have the FDA - it is to, as much as possible, protect the health of consumers against the practices of producers looking to increase profit at the risk of safety. The FDA didn’t just decide one day to exist. It was a response to real issues regarding illness and death. In an unrestrained market, lead paint gets used in kids’ toys, seat belts would never exist, you’d never be sure what meat you’d be getting in a McDonald’s hamburger, and we would have all had to just sit back and watch the nation collapse economically while the financial market continued digging its hole. Regulations of markets are a socialist construct, so please be more specific when ranting about impending socialism as we’ve had forms of it for 100 years.

“But what”, people might say, “about innovation? What motivation does anybody have to excel in a socialist system?” There they go again with absolutes. Modern socialist democracy doesn’t look to replace capitalism. It looks to complement it. In the current proposals, government is not looking to convert every hospital into a state run entity. It just wants to pay your expenses. Those hospitals are still to be independently run. Pharma companies will still benefit by improving drugs. Equipment companies will still be able to sell their gadgetry. Would one say that Blue Cross has dampened innovation just because it doled out the cash? Yes, actually. Procedures not covered by an insurer tend to not be performed, and if that procedure required a new process or product, the marketability of that product is reduced. Yet, innovation continues on.

“Big Brother” is a favorite talking point of mine because I have a long history of being staunchly against government intrusion in all facets of my life. It was my turn to be frothy when the USA PATRIOT Act was being put into place, when it became legal for the government to listen in on my calls without proper judicial review or to make me take off my shoes before boarding a plane. I was one of those guys who went on about how giving up privacy for the mirage of security was unconstitutional and an affront to my rugged individualism. Then, on December 3rd, 2001, that all went to hell. That was the day my son was born, had to be resuscitated, flown to another hospital, and treated for five weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit. That was the month that I had to make the decision between letting my son die or putting him through tracheostomy and gastrostomy surgery so that he could live into an unknown future. It was the event that showed me what asses and what saviors the state can be.  And the price of admission for this grand adventure was all of my privacy.

Mind you, not all of that privacy was violated by the state. When your child incurs over one million dollars in expenses in the first month of his life, everybody paying a piece wants your information. Add to the purely financial violation the fact that my son required massive support from doctors, therapists, home nurses, and equipment companies, all of whom must also violate your privacy in one way or another. The only place I still have privacy is in my own head, which I sometimes choose to violate by writing items like this.

To date, nearly eight years after that all began, I have yet to experience a privacy violation that was not directly related to the treatment of my son. The state has not revealed our info to anyone it shouldn’t have (to my knowledge). In fact, the worst violators of privacy have been the private nursing organizations who placed people in our home that were quite happy to regularly disregard HIPAA regulations and discuss their other cases with us or discuss our matters with their friends and family. The state, by contrast, was often refreshingly impersonal when dealing with us, which is how we liked it. Big Brother cared only about two things - making sure private health insurance was tried first before deferring to state and making sure that my son required all the things we requested. For the latter, they deferred to our personal doctors. My son constitutes an immense and ongoing expense. He incurs more cost than you or I could ever hope to achieve, and yet he continues to receive coverage. In the end, I traded privacy for his security.

What is interesting to me is that all of these topics are boiling to the surface in the fight against universal health care. There is no use pretending that that isn’t the end game here. The liberal goal is that every citizen of the United States have access to health care paid for by the populace at large. But why is this a bad thing? Why are people fighting with one another over doing good for their neighbor?

Health care is not the real concern. Control and power are what is at stake here. Health care hits at the heart of the “me” by having a direct impact on every person who is part of the program, and this is an effort that has failed for liberals in the past, making it a prime toppling target now that it has risen again. I wish people had been this fervent about the liberties they lost during the Bush administration, but throughout those eight years, none of them recognized their personal stake and responded with “I’ve done nothing wrong. I have nothing to hide.” Now, they all want to hide their medical records in order to deny help to those who need it. Ask any of these people individually, and they will all espouse their compassion but will maintain that compulsory compassion is no compassion at all.

However, none of them will say that health coverage is a bad thing, because it isn’t. What they won’t admit is the health care debate is a convenient topic for asserting a will they are afraid is diminishing. They didn’t fight the bailouts like this because they feared for their bank accounts. They didn’t fight the stimulus like this because some of those jobs might go to them. But they’re fighting health care like this because they already have coverage and don’t need that lousy government help. Rejecting government only when it doesn’t benefit you ignores the fact that it might benefit others or that you simply don’t recognize the benefit.

Let the debate on this topic continue, but please, let it be debate. Let us come to it informed and with our eyes open to what drives support and opposition to it. The moment we begin to shout, we have conceded reason and are driving from guttural emotion. As it is now, the debate can be distilled thusly:

Pro: “We want to take some money from everybody and provide for the literal health of the nation.”

Con: “Screw you, you can’t have my money or my privacy, I don’t care who suffers because of it.”

Contrast that with this quote. Some of you have probably heard it before:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.

No, that wasn’t said by Chicken Little.

Pressed for time yesterday, I acquired dinner via McDonald’s drive-thru and headed home.  Once there, I sat upon the couch, lounging too far back for civilized man, and consumed a double quarter pounder with cheese.

Inspecting the packaging, I noticed that this little sandwich packed 740 calories all on its own.

This got me to thinking about obesity in general, which led me to ruminate on why it is our bodies are so unable to properly handle the excess material we now consume.  And that led me to state: God does not exist.

Here’s how I got there!

It is quite clear that the human body is not able to recognize when there is no scarcity of food resources and is especially unable to trigger greater amounts of caloric evacuation when the body continues to ingest food while there is no exertion generally involved.

My thought is that this is because the body has not yet reprogrammed itself for our current fat, happy state.  It has been evolved over millennia with the idea that the consumption of food follows scarcity and exertion, that the body has to engage in physical work in order to acquire food.  It is also geared towards the idea that there might be a lengthy period of time between meals depending on whether or not food acquisition is successful.

So how does this negate the existence of God?  Pretty easily, actually.  If God had created us so perfectly, then wouldn’t our bodies have started off with the ability to adjust caloric retention in the face of increased consumption?  Adam & Eve were, after all, “born” in paradise where they wanted for nothing.  Adam didn’t have to lift a finger to get some grub.  Heck, the animals walked right up to him and, apparently, apples were plentiful.  But of course, he liked them apples and got kicked out at which point God made him horrifically mortal.

So for the time they were in paradise, Adam & Eve, supposedly, were not fatties even though hunting and gathering wasn’t really a concern shared in Genesis.  Besides, a perfect creator is perfectly capable of building a creature that doesn’t just suddenly get chubby every time he sits around too long.  Unless he’s looking to punish that creature for being a schlub.

Anyway, out of paradise, stuff changes.  Eve has to have labor pains and everybody goes mortal.  But only sort of mortal.  They still get to live hundreds of years, so God has essentially changed the DNA of his creations in order to rough them up a bit.  And then he does it again when he decides even that hundreds of years is way too much.

But, so far, no mention of letting them get fat.  If obesity isn’t a punishment from God, then why would he have created us in a way that would lend itself to our eventual fattening?  Does God get fat?  I mean, really, he just sits around all day listening to people, probably eating Kentucky Fried (mashed potatoes and gravy are as close to the Rapture as one can get).

And I just kept thinking about this.  The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being must have purposefully created us to get fat!  What a jerk!  Somewhere in his grand design, he said, “Man, if these cats ever get lazy, I’m gonna make it so they just balloon up and spawn a plus size clothing market.”  Otherwise, why not engineer us so that we always stay thin?

After the rush of sodium and grease worked its way through my system, I stopped thinking about this topic, but when faced with the choice between the idea that our bodies have not yet evolved to take into account an abundant food supply and a sedentary existence versus the idea that an invisible guy made us to get fat in order to punish our success in being lazy, I decided to go with the one that at least seemed plausible.

And since I ruled out the involvement of a deity, well, I just threw the baby out with the bathwater and concluded (as I always do) that it’s easier to believe he doesn’t exist at all than to believe he’s a putz.

Catholics are cool.  They get to wear ornate outfits, exclude women, and operate tax free.  Well, okay, that’s most recognized religions.  But leave it to the Catholics to make decrees stating that homosexual practices will lead to the destruction of humanity.

I suppose that could be true if heterosexuality died out over time, but the heteros would have to be giving birth to huge numbers of homos in order for there to ever be enough of an imbalance to threaten the survival of mankind.

And even then, the homos would have to swear off any form of parenthood via adoption, insemination, futuristic self-fertilization, and the good ol’ “drunk donor” method.  In order for humanity to die out, everybody would have to decide that breeding is simply not desirable.  

Are there any indications that such is the case?  No.  Not at all.  The world population continues to grow even though “they” are among us.  GLBT couples fight for the right to adopt and are made spectacles when they have children.  In fact, the only people threatening the continuing existence of humanity are priests with their vows of heterocelibacy.  

But at least the Catholics have tempered their opposition somewhat.  It’s now okay to be gay as long as you’re not gay with somebody else.

I was making some mac ‘n cheese tonight, watching the pot of water heat up just before the point of boiling.  All along the bottom of the pot, small bubbles of air formed and held steady spots while even smaller bubbles danced between them.  Then, as often occurs, the larger pockets released and rose to the surface of the water where they then swirled and joined with other similar pockets.

As I observed all of this, I thought about the complexity of everything I had just witnessed and realized that, in some ways, my atheism is just as “faith” based as most people’s belief in a higher power.

Some believe that God must exist because our world is so incredibly complex.  They can’t conceive of any of this happening on its own without guidance from one infinitely powerful.  I, however, can’t believe that any being could be so infinitely powerful as to conceive of the rules required to govern the behavior of heated water.  That is, I can’t conceive of any being capable of building systems of such complexity.

Speaking of religion, I was reading an article today about a local man who recently sold a rather extensive collection of Nazi correspondence relating to the Holocaust.  One of the reasons he started his collection was that he wanted tangible evidence in order to refute those who claim the Holocaust never happened.  This is “speaking of religion” because I thought it bizarre that people would rather believe in the divinity of Christ, who has no direct descendents that we’re aware of and whose existence is no more corporeal than, say, Harry Potter’s, yet they would sooner believe that than believe a Holocaust survivor standing in their presence.

Damn, this better be some good mac ‘n cheese.

Brandy and I sometimes like to discuss the possible origins of the phrase “donkey balls”.  Part of this is because it seems like a ridiculous thing to use as a comparative statement.  The other part is that Brandy enjoys stating that something “sucks donkey balls”.

We still don’t know the origin of the phrase, but perhaps the mention of donkey genitalia in the Bible plays some part in its history.

It has been a blissfully long time since I’ve been in the thrall of Catholicism. Being threatened by old men with a week’s worth of Hail Marys held no appeal for me. One can therefore understand if I’ve fallen behind on the various papal edicts offered forth by the pontiff.

Thank God in Heaven that I spent the weekend with two nearly lapsed Catholics or else I would have never heard about the new 10 Commandments for cars, released to Catholics the world over as part of a 36 page document titled “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road“.

So what is it the Pope asks you to not do while behind the wheel of a Satanmobile?

1. You shall not kill.

That one is rather redundant, I would think.

2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

Communion in the form of community and communication? Why yes, just the other day somebody communicated to me with a single finger. Communion in the form of the eucharist? Does eating a burger from McD’s count?

3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

That’s not really a commandment. Regardless, being nice to other drivers does not mean one of them won’t hit you.

4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.

Pick up hitchhikers.

5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.

There we are, another reason to condemn Hummers.

6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

I’ll donate $50 to Jerry’s Kids if you don’t drive drunk tonight.

7. Support the families of accident victims.

… By myself? Or do I get to draw from the Catholic coffers on this one?

8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

“You fucking smashed in my entire front end!” “I know, and I understand your anger, but could you see it in your heart to forgive me and get money from the Vatican to cover your repairs?” “Yeah, alright.”

9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

Squirrels, opossums, woodchucks, deer, and skunks.

10. Feel responsible toward others.

“It’s my fault you drive like an ass.”

Thanks Catholicism! I look forward to the roads being a path to sainthood. With as many Catholics as there are in the US, this should result in real measurable change. Unless they blow these off like they do the biblical 10 Commandments and just figure they can make it up later in confession.

After every news outlet spent the last three days talking about the heightened security around shipments of the new Harry Potter book, one guy with one copy and one digital camera is now responsible for the book being in the hands of several thousand people as I type this.

Yes, he (I’m guessing he… man hands) took photos of every page of the book, and then somebody else put them all together in a PDF file for easy reading.

Well, okay, not easy. The photographer wasn’t exactly great about making sure the pages were flat, so there are lots of unreadable spots.

So… Did I read it? About 10 pages of it and then stopped. My UK edition will be on its way soon enough, so I don’t have a burning desire to squint at my monitor to read the Americanized version (in the UK, it would have been “Americanised”). Plus, the pressure I received from my wife was just unbearable. I was warned that any revelation of plot line contained therein would be grounds for divorce. Also, I was informed that I was a dirty law breaker who had no sense of decency.

Sure, okay. Except that we’re going to have two purchased copies of the thing in our house within the week. I don’t feel so bad about having a copy slightly early. It’s not piracy so much as it is a preview (in full) of what we’ll be receiving.

It isn’t as though this leak is going to make a lick of difference. The book will still sell every single copy it was going to sell before this PDF surfaced. No crappy computer flip book is going to keep people like the fine young ladies pictured right from walking home with the final Potter tome.

J.K.’s future is secure.

Speaking of fans, if you’ve never watched Harry Potter Parking Lot, you should. Right now. Do it while you’re torrenting the book.

Following up a bit on yesterday’s post, I once was trapped in a van with somebody who was incredibly religious and figured out a way that God gave the okay to shoot people with a glock if need be.

This guy’s wife also liked sex “on top”, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, we got into a discussion regarding God, faith, evolution, and atheism. He was doing his best to figure out why it was that I didn’t believe in God when, at one point in my life, I was doing puppet ministry and was the favorite teen in the local Methodist church.

When we somehow got to the death of my father, he pounced: “Do you blame God for your father’s death?”

“No, I blame his 30 years of chain smoking. He died of lung cancer.”

In fact, I never once thought, “Why, God, why?” It was so patently obvious that my dad poisoned himself over a very long period of time and suffered the consequences. I’m not saying I don’t miss him, but I’m sure not about to try to place blame elsewhere.

The same will probably happen soon with my mother who is overweight, diabetic, suffers heart palpitations, and continues to smoke. No anger need be directed towards the heavens if that passing comes to be.

During our conversation, we were hitting on creationism vs. evolution. I found myself saying the following: “Have you ever thought that maybe evolution actually happened and was set in motion by God? If you go with that slant, then we can all just agree to study evolution and not worry so much about its point of origin.” Yeah… I went and applied intelligent design “theory” before even having heard the phrase. Go me. I differed a bit from ID in the fact that I was suggesting that evolution still took its own course after its supernatural jumpstart. I wasn’t suggesting that humanity was a known goal.

My point, really, was to make this guy think that maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t thought about all the possibilities. That, to me, is the first step in free thinking. Our conversation didn’t have any long term impact on him, though. The guy drove like a maniac, so I wasn’t keen to get stuck in the van with him too often in order to reinforce these new thought patterns. Plus, he had a glock.

When I was a teenager, I attempted the same thing within my own family. I one day asked my at the time very Catholic mother, “How do you know that the Bible wasn’t written by Satan just to mess with you?” The reaction to that was not pleasant. Role playing games were thrown out, heavy metal music and paraphernalia was destroyed, and I was no longer allowed to skip church. Had she stopped for a moment, she could have realized that such a scenario relies upon the existence of Satan which, ostensibly, means there’s a God to which we would have to answer regardless. But no, the reaction was that such a thing was not possible because the Bible is the word of God. And there was no questioning that.

That was the moment when I stopped believing in God.

I put on a fine act for several years after that, counseling at church camps, making puppets talk about Jesus, joining the friggen choir. I professed to be “born again”, attended Christian music concerts, and was active in youth groups. At one point, a minister told me he thought I was destined to be a minister myself. Mostly, I just wanted attention. What kind of godly child would have his camp kids wear bras under their shirts all day only to end the evening with a rendition of “The Bra-dy Bunch” wherein they remove said bras and fling them over their heads? (And, equally terrible, I had to cajole female campers into lending them to us.)

Hmmm, probably shouldn’t have admitted to that last bit.

I ran into a cousin of mine while picking up photos at Wal-Mart last night. This particular cousin, without fail, always tells me that the resemblance between my father and me is stunning. He mentions this largely because my father has been dead for 17 years, half of my life.

As we talked about how our respective families were doing, how our jobs were, et cetera, he stopped to say that my father was likely looking down at me from above, proud of all that I’ve done.

I smiled, nodded politely, and muttered, “Yep.” What I really wanted to say was, “Well, I don’t think there’s an afterlife, so he’s probably just dead. And the only person that I really need to be proud of me is myself.”

Don’t get me wrong. Folks that know me know I’m an attention whore so it seems like I’m constantly fishing for approval, but as I explained to Brandy last night, that’s really a case of running around saying “Look how awesome I am!” and not “Do you think I’m awesome?”

Anyway, there’s usually little sense in making somebody feel bad for trying to be nice, so I let those things slide. But for the record, I feel the same way about people that say “Bless you” when I sneeze. I don’t really require a blessing every time I clear dust from my nasal passage. Nobody blesses me when I fart or belch.

Speaking of atheism, I finished reading Hitchens’ “God is not Great” last night. My one line review: not nearly as intolerable as Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”. I’ve now moved onto lighter reading - the rise and fall of Commodore computing.