5. October 2007 by Rob.

I have to say it: this world is dominated by cowards.  Oh, there are occasional heroes out there who stand up for what is right but the majority of the world is dominated by sniveling little cowards.

Take the Chinese.  They want to be a world power but are unable to control their own manufacturing.  Their response to the repression in Myanmar?  To beg for restraint.  Why?  Because they are afraid to face the truth about themselves.  This is inherently the fatal flaw for all tyrants and tyrannical systems.  The only way to ensure that they remain in power is to deny the truth of why they are in power.   By oppressing others, a small group remains in power and controls the resources.

Welcome to the new Millenium, please pick up your reality pill and a sharp dose of truth and move to the back of the line.  The internet and advances in communication mean that you cannot keep things hidden any more.  China found this out during the SARS debacle.  Human beings have a natural urge and desire to communicate and they will share most anything about themselves or their environment.  Don’t believe me?  Just one word for an answer there: YouTube.

What is being peeled away are centuries of layers (or decades of copycat layers)  of secrecy which used to hide atrocities and secret deals.  It also advertises the excesses of those in power who try to benefit but also to hide their wealth.  More and more these days, “scandal” is a daily revelation, not something that has to be researched and pulled out like taffy.  I feel almost sorry for Woodward and Bernstein.  They could have seen Watergate come and go in the span of a week or less these days.

But it also brings to the fore the root cause of so much trouble in the world today: cowardice.  The fear that I will lose something I have leads me to twist things to benefit me.

I know I have an idealistic view of the future, but the fact is that there is enough for all of us.  Some of us want it all but that isn’t because of greed or hate or anything remotely similar.  Once again it is because those who want it all are cowards, afraid to lose it all instead.  Why are we so afraid?  Because we want something to be afraid of.  Our fear is that if we have nothing to fear, we just have to make something up.  Why are we afraid of terrorists?  Because not to be afriad would mark us as ignorant.  Nonsense.  It marks us as brave.  Not the foolhardy bravery of a teenager marching off to war with stories of bravery in his ears.  But the bravery of someone living their life without regard to the inherent danger of life itself.

So I ask you, dear reader, to look into your heart.  Why are you so afraid.  And why can’t you simply face the truth?  Because you were raised to be a coward.  Now, what are you going to do about it?

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29. September 2007 by Rob.

I had a little incident the other day with a woman who is devoutly religious, one of those “born again” Christian women who always say “amen” as a punctuation mark.  While in normal conversation I tend to ignore the overtly religious implications of her thoughts, tending to be of the “everyone has the right to their opinion” variety of person, this time she went too far.

She was agitated because two women tried to get a marriage license here in Denver and were denied.  They protested by sit-in and were arrested for trespassing.  Not entirely an uncommon event but something which was always occurring in other states, at least she thought it couldn’t happen here.

The comment which triggered my little diatribe was when she said that god had created marriage to be between one man and one woman.  Hold the phone.  God did not create marriage, man did.  In fact, if you look at marriage throughout the ages, you find that religion was either not involved until sometime around the middle ages or was only for the wealthy and powerful.  Now I have to apologize to anyone who has already recognized that this is a christian-centric thought because that, unfortunately, is the primary bias against which I have to fight.  I know a bit about other religions and apologize that my remarks tend to be a bit generic here, but they can and do apply to other religions, just not all of them.

Anyway, I asked her where she got the idea that marriage was created by god and she said that it had always been that way.  I then asked if Adam and Eve were married which seemed to startle her.  I said, there is no record in the bible of god ever marrying the two of them.  I then asked if there was marriage in the time of Jesus and she said “of course.”  You mean when the family of a girl (usually 12 to 15 and worthless to the family) was offered to the lucky family that had a son (usually much older)  along with a major bribe - in the form of a dowry - just so they could unify the two families?  You mean when the woman traded her father’s name for her husband’s since she was considered little more than property?  You mean when only the wealthiest or most powerful individuals had those unions “blessed” by the priests?  Did you know that the sacrament of matrimony is only about a thousand years old?

She went still, this wild look of shock on her face as I pounded truth after truth into the argument. You see, she had been converted by someone who told her that everything in the bible was true and she willingly believed it.  But when confronted with the truth, she was unable to process it.  I asked her how two women getting married could, in any way shape or form, harm her marriage.  She roused long enough to answer with the expected phrase: it diminishes the institution of marriage.

She was nervous when I laughed and responded.  So the strength of your marriage depends entirely on whether or not people you dislike are allowed to have the same rights and privileges that you have?  I would think that divorce, infidelity, and the ability to get married quickly would diminish marriage, not simply allowing two men or two women to be bonded in love.  You make it sound like a country club where you don’t want any of “those” people invited.

She was a little flustered and I could see that her mind was spinning.  It’s not nice to toss a little chaos into the rigidly structured minds of  people who rely on religion to determine their lives.  But sometimes you need to open the window and allow a little fresh air in.  Don’t ever claim anything as absolute when there is conflicting and contradictory evidence for something else out there.  And please don’t ever attack me personally.  You get me started and I won’t stop until I have completely destroyed your position.  You see, this little thing called truth?  She’s a powerful bitch!

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25. September 2007 by Rob.

The “him” I refer to is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  And the stories over the past few days have come fast and furious.  From the initial outcry over Columbia University’s hosting him to the comments he made at the United Nations, Americans really haven’t followed the true meaning behind these events.

The fact is that his participation in the event at Columbia University was necessary to prove the true power of democracy.  I was astounded and gratefully amazed at the University President’s comments which challenged President Ahmadinejad views.  And Ahmadinejad’s reaction and subsequent fall was the most perfect example of why this effort had significant value.  The derision he was met with when he stated that there were no gays in Iran is not something he is used to.  But he, and the world, need to see that true democracy allows idiots to spout their lies and fallacies but to also be challenged for them.  He couldn’t defend his views and so he lost, a true victory.

Unfortunately, those people who protested his appearance, while they have the full right to do so, obviously didn’t get it.  They didn’t want him to have the right to speak his piece in a forum where people could choose to be…or not.   If he had been barred from participating, then, remarkably enough, his views would have been validated because we would not be living in a democracy.  If the protesters had been there to challenge his views, then I feel they would have been valid.  But to seek to deny him the opportunity to speak?  I suggest you read the Constitution of the United States again.  And thank your lucky stars that we have not (yet) fallen from that ideal.

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