A couple of Saddam Hussein's former jailors (a coupleof reservists, who seem like amiable farm boys from the Midwest) have spoken out recently about the Butcher of Baghdad and said that the out of work dictator, in American captivity, is charming, funny and fatherly. He told them that everything he did, he did for his country, and he had to invade Kuwait because they were raping Iraqui women. They also say that Saddam spends his time writing romance novels and his favorite activity is ... gardening. My God, is this guy Satan or what?!
Naaah. I'm not going to stand up for the guy and say how misunderstood he is. He's left behind plenty of evidence as to what a creep he is (hundreds of thousands of corpses, mostly). And his argument that he was doing everything from patriotism? We know what kind of scoundrels hide behind the flag, don't we? It's a thin excuse for causing the suffering of thousands of innocents. Finally, sure he's a nice guy now. You know, if you pull the fangs on a Viper, I'm sure the defanged Viper would be charming, funny and fatherly, too.
Real life villains seldom think of themselves as villains. Hussein thought he was murdering and torturing out of selfless ideals, for the greater good of others. Maybe some serial killers believe that they're doing nothing but evil and know it. Everybody else, at least at the time they're committing infamy, can justify it to themselves. I know I do it all the time.
Hitler's former secretary recently apologized for the fact that she found him to be a rather considerate and thoughtful boss. She knows everyone else thought that he was the most evil human who ever lived, but she couldn't compromise her memory. He was a nice guy in the office. That doesn't mean he wasn't just awful at other times, butyou know what? He probably was a rather pleasant and well behaved fellow ninety nine percent of the time. The other one percent of thetime he was authorizing the horrible deaths of millions and then he wasn't so nice. Not at all.
The Black Magician Aleister Crowley was once labeled the 'wickedest man who ever lived' and was also in his time labeled the Antichrist. For his time, no one was more reviled than this debauched sorcercer. Yet, at the end of his life, he was friends with a neighbor girl and even entertained her (at her invitation) and her little guests at her Birthday party, wearing his sorcercers robes dancing around making faces for their amusement. Then he went home and conjured demons and prayed to the great horned God and committed other blasphemies.
I could think up other examples, but hopefully my point is made. The people we think of as immoral are, in fact, highly moral - in their own minds. What we think of as horrors, they think of as sacrifices for the greater good, which is conveniently defined by themselves. No one really does wrong - until they decide later that it was wrong, perhaps. When they do it, though, it's right.
I wish bad people would laugh sadistically as they glory in their badness, knowing what they're doing is bad, while they're doing it, knowing what is right and knowingly rejecting it. That's the way I was taught it happened on the Saturday morning cartoons, but alas, in real life no one ever wears capes or masks and everything is a shade of gray.
How this affects the Apocalypse: Saddam might still be a good candidate for Antichrist, because think about it: He's not dead yet and he should be.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Chocolate Prison
The latest unemployment figures are out and ...they're about the same as last time. Five point one or two percent of Americans are unemployed. That's not as good as Clinton who had two or three percent unemployment, but it's definitely better than Carter who had double digit unemployment and double digit inflation, too. Bush is right in the middle, so that's okay, don't you think?
Ok. That unemployment rate doesn't include the people who have simply stopped looking because they've given up hope. That's a million or so, but they don't count. Oh, and prisoners. They don't count either, because they're not out looking for jobs - there are a couple million or so of them, too. It's probably a good thing that they're not out looking for jobs because they'd be looking for jobs that involved robbing and stealing, and that would definitely be a bad thing, especially since Enron tanked and took a lot of robbing and stealing jobs down the toilet with them. And all those prisoners create jobs, for police who have to find them in the first place, for prosecutors who have to prosecute them, for defense attorneys to defend them(but not too, hard, obviously), prison guards to guard them, parole officersto watch over them when they get out, halfway houses to house them, and so on.
The thing about our prisoner population is that half of the prisoners there are in for drug related offenses, and the prison population has doubled in the past ten years making us the biggest country in the world with the biggest percent of our population incarcerated. USA!USA! We're number one! What I want to know is: why are we Americans such criminals? Why are there more ne'er-do-wells here than anywhere else? Is it part and parcel of the capitalist system that our worship of greed causes us to want so much more stuff than anyone else and that is more important than the laws we make for ourselves?
Drugs, I know, are bad. They have devastating consequences for people involved with them. But why are we making the consequences even more devastating by sending addicts to prison? I guess I'm pretty Libertarian about this one and believe that what adults choose to do with their bodies should be their business as long as they're willing to accept the consequences. Other Western countries have decriminalized or legalized drugs and do you know what happened? Not much. They didn't go to Hell in a hand basket and about the same number of people who used drugs before decriminalization used them after. What did happen was these countries didn't have to spend their citizens tax money on extra police and extra prisons.
This isn't going to happen in the United States. I know that. But we did end prohibition and a great deal of lawlessness went away when alcohol, which people wanted to drink, became legal. I guarantee that would happen if we ended our drug prohibition. Actually, thankGod for prohibition, my Grandfather the bootlegger became rich and when it was repealed he had to get a legitimate business. Darn it.
Now, (I repeat) drugs are bad. Don't use them. Don't tell anyone that I told you to use them, either, because that's not my point.
Drug addiction is widely recoginized as being a disease and is alone among diseases as being the only one that is largely illegal. I think it's because people are so uncomfortable with the voluntary aspect of addiction. Despite the physiologic basis for addiction the addict still has to decide to take a drug. Of course, other diseases have a voluntary component also. Lung cancer, for example. People get lung cancer from voluntary smoking. (Mostly. Yeah, okay, people get it second hand, too). Or type two Diabetes, which is heavily influenced by obesity(ie) people voluntarily eating too much.
What I think is that we should be fair about it and make all diseases illegal. We should have a war on disease just like for the past couple of decades we've had a war on drugs. Think about how successful thewar on drugs has been! We could have that same success in banishing disease from the United States, too! Lung cancer might be the first disease we'd start with since smoking's pretty much being criminalized anyways, so it would be easy to make the result of the smoking criminal, too. Then we would go with Diabetes because they use needles and that's sort of like being a junkie, isn't it? Then we would make sweets against the law (leads to Diabetes) and especially ... chocolate.
Aha! All of you women reading this just got a cold chill up your spines, because that would almost be the end of the world for you, wouldn't it? No. I don't have any inside information on this one. They haven't passed the legislation criminalizing chocolate - yet. But what if it happened? What would you do, ladies?
I'll bet you'd get it one way or another. Right? There would be chocolate dealers up and down the country. Guaranteed. And despite the exhorbitant costs and the possibility of long prison time, you'd still do your chocolate. You'd have your daily fix. I know it. Maybe you want to think about that when it comes time to build more prisons to get all of these 'addicts'off the streets.
What this has to do with the Apocalypse: Drug use in the Bible isactually referred to as sorcery. So, all this drug use is actually sorceryand an indication that we are, in fact, in the end times.
Ok. That unemployment rate doesn't include the people who have simply stopped looking because they've given up hope. That's a million or so, but they don't count. Oh, and prisoners. They don't count either, because they're not out looking for jobs - there are a couple million or so of them, too. It's probably a good thing that they're not out looking for jobs because they'd be looking for jobs that involved robbing and stealing, and that would definitely be a bad thing, especially since Enron tanked and took a lot of robbing and stealing jobs down the toilet with them. And all those prisoners create jobs, for police who have to find them in the first place, for prosecutors who have to prosecute them, for defense attorneys to defend them(but not too, hard, obviously), prison guards to guard them, parole officersto watch over them when they get out, halfway houses to house them, and so on.
The thing about our prisoner population is that half of the prisoners there are in for drug related offenses, and the prison population has doubled in the past ten years making us the biggest country in the world with the biggest percent of our population incarcerated. USA!USA! We're number one! What I want to know is: why are we Americans such criminals? Why are there more ne'er-do-wells here than anywhere else? Is it part and parcel of the capitalist system that our worship of greed causes us to want so much more stuff than anyone else and that is more important than the laws we make for ourselves?
Drugs, I know, are bad. They have devastating consequences for people involved with them. But why are we making the consequences even more devastating by sending addicts to prison? I guess I'm pretty Libertarian about this one and believe that what adults choose to do with their bodies should be their business as long as they're willing to accept the consequences. Other Western countries have decriminalized or legalized drugs and do you know what happened? Not much. They didn't go to Hell in a hand basket and about the same number of people who used drugs before decriminalization used them after. What did happen was these countries didn't have to spend their citizens tax money on extra police and extra prisons.
This isn't going to happen in the United States. I know that. But we did end prohibition and a great deal of lawlessness went away when alcohol, which people wanted to drink, became legal. I guarantee that would happen if we ended our drug prohibition. Actually, thankGod for prohibition, my Grandfather the bootlegger became rich and when it was repealed he had to get a legitimate business. Darn it.
Now, (I repeat) drugs are bad. Don't use them. Don't tell anyone that I told you to use them, either, because that's not my point.
Drug addiction is widely recoginized as being a disease and is alone among diseases as being the only one that is largely illegal. I think it's because people are so uncomfortable with the voluntary aspect of addiction. Despite the physiologic basis for addiction the addict still has to decide to take a drug. Of course, other diseases have a voluntary component also. Lung cancer, for example. People get lung cancer from voluntary smoking. (Mostly. Yeah, okay, people get it second hand, too). Or type two Diabetes, which is heavily influenced by obesity(ie) people voluntarily eating too much.
What I think is that we should be fair about it and make all diseases illegal. We should have a war on disease just like for the past couple of decades we've had a war on drugs. Think about how successful thewar on drugs has been! We could have that same success in banishing disease from the United States, too! Lung cancer might be the first disease we'd start with since smoking's pretty much being criminalized anyways, so it would be easy to make the result of the smoking criminal, too. Then we would go with Diabetes because they use needles and that's sort of like being a junkie, isn't it? Then we would make sweets against the law (leads to Diabetes) and especially ... chocolate.
Aha! All of you women reading this just got a cold chill up your spines, because that would almost be the end of the world for you, wouldn't it? No. I don't have any inside information on this one. They haven't passed the legislation criminalizing chocolate - yet. But what if it happened? What would you do, ladies?
I'll bet you'd get it one way or another. Right? There would be chocolate dealers up and down the country. Guaranteed. And despite the exhorbitant costs and the possibility of long prison time, you'd still do your chocolate. You'd have your daily fix. I know it. Maybe you want to think about that when it comes time to build more prisons to get all of these 'addicts'off the streets.
What this has to do with the Apocalypse: Drug use in the Bible isactually referred to as sorcery. So, all this drug use is actually sorceryand an indication that we are, in fact, in the end times.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Psychic Turtle Hot-line
This wildlife specialist in Florida (Wild Lyle) has been on the news because it seems that the turtles in Florida have been laying their eggs especially high on the river banks and when this happens it inevitably means that it's going to be a rough hurricane season. My opinion of turtles that live in hugely hurricane prone areas is just about the same as people who live in those areas. Get out of there! Who told you that you had to live there in the first place? There are plenty of beautiful places in the US and nearby foreign countries wheregiant storms don't come by and blow your house away on a regular basis. Why don't you choose one of those? (However,'Tornado Alley', that ain't one of them. Stay away from there because that's not a good bet).
'Wild Lyle' went on to explain that the turtles are part of a phenomenon called 'animal premonition' and then he went on to give another example which was the tsunami in which many, many animals wereseen to be running for higher ground long before there was any other indication of the big wave. So far, the turtles seem to be spot on the money as there's a hurricane heading for Florida right this minute. The problem with 'animal premonition' is that, despite how well documented it is, it lacks a readily explainable physical cause. I suppose if pressed'Wild Lyle' would mumble something about magnetic fields as a cause, but c'mon, who are we kidding? No type of magnetic field willpredict the entire hurricane season and not even the smartest turtle can read a magnetic field.
Everybody who's had a pet knows that it's read their mind at one time or another. Maybe you wanted to explain it as your pet reading your body language or something like that, but in your heart of hearts you knew, that creature saw right through you. There have been studies done on this, so you don't have to take my word for it or even your own experience.
How this affects the Apocalypse: I said this before: God likes animals. Why else would he be giving them special tip-offs about natural disasters that are going to wipe out all the humans nearby? I don't know about you, but if I see all the animals running towards the hills, I'm putting on my tennies and I'll be heading off, too.
'Wild Lyle' went on to explain that the turtles are part of a phenomenon called 'animal premonition' and then he went on to give another example which was the tsunami in which many, many animals wereseen to be running for higher ground long before there was any other indication of the big wave. So far, the turtles seem to be spot on the money as there's a hurricane heading for Florida right this minute. The problem with 'animal premonition' is that, despite how well documented it is, it lacks a readily explainable physical cause. I suppose if pressed'Wild Lyle' would mumble something about magnetic fields as a cause, but c'mon, who are we kidding? No type of magnetic field willpredict the entire hurricane season and not even the smartest turtle can read a magnetic field.
Everybody who's had a pet knows that it's read their mind at one time or another. Maybe you wanted to explain it as your pet reading your body language or something like that, but in your heart of hearts you knew, that creature saw right through you. There have been studies done on this, so you don't have to take my word for it or even your own experience.
How this affects the Apocalypse: I said this before: God likes animals. Why else would he be giving them special tip-offs about natural disasters that are going to wipe out all the humans nearby? I don't know about you, but if I see all the animals running towards the hills, I'm putting on my tennies and I'll be heading off, too.
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