Goodbye, Super Tuesday — Who Could Hang a Game on You?

Goodbye, Super Tuesday

Who Could Hang a Game on You?

(apologies to Mick Jagger)

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 7th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The most pointless primary season since primaries began has ground to an effective end, and oh, my gosh, can you believe this? Biden and Trump will be their respective party’s nominees! Whoa! Did you see that coming?

Well, of course you did. You’re not an idiot.

Cable channels devoted hours to covering this non-story, with on-air journalists declaring solemnly that with the polls closed just two minutes earlier, the results were “too close to call.” It was a bit like watching Walter Cronkite narrate a Popeye cartoon and pretend feverishly that Bluto was by far the leading candidate in the race, but it wasn’t over yet! It was pretty sad. Speaking of cartoons, I switched off MSNBC and watched cartoons instead. Even Steve Kornacki couldn’t wring any drama out of the vote count. The only upsets were in DC and Vermont, where Trump managed to lose to Haley. Which showed that in two corners of the country, the majority of Republicans still hold three-digit IQs.

They were glaring exceptions. Most of the polling showed that the former political party known as the Republicans have been fully subsumed by the Nutzis and Nazis. In North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was selected to run for governor of the state. He’s a holocaust denier, a 9/11 truther, quotes Hitler, and wants to strip gays and other gendered people of all rights. And like most of what’s left of his party, he believes humanity begins at conception and ends at birth. He’s a raving nut, not to put too fine a point on it. In Alabama, they chose “justice” Sarah Stewart on Tuesday as their nominee to lead the state Supreme Court. She was one of the judges who ruled that frozen embryos were persons. In California, Steve Garvey, who played first base for the Dodgers for many years up until about forty years ago, came in second in the Senate primary in the state’s free-for-all vote where the top two vote getters are the nominees, even if they are both from the same party—as often happens in a state where the GOP is moribund. Garvey came in second, partly from name recognition (he was a good ball player) and party because Adam Schiff and other Democrats actually PROMOTED Garvey’s campaign, reasoning that he would be easier to beat in the General than Katie Porter or Barbara Lee would be. While he only beat Garvey by a percentage point, it’s important to note that nearly all of the 34% who voted for someone else are Democrats, and probably as much as a third of Garvey’s vote came from Democrats as well. This was probably a kind of a high-water mark for the GOP, since Garvey at least is sane and not a full-blown fascist. By GOP standards, that makes him a fairly respectable candidate.

So now the real fight begins, and despite the on-going dissolution of Donald Trump, it is a serious fight, with the fate of the country at risk.

Trump, in and of himself, is a fading risk. He clearly is suffering from dementia. He only occasionally remembers who the president is, and one of the times he got it right, he wound up endorsing him instead of himself.

But there are a lot of bad actors about, and they are very willing to lie, cheat, steal and commit any fraudulent acts possible to win. The Heritage Foundation (i.e., The National Association of Zealots and Ideologues) openly flaunts its “Project 2025” which starts by eliminating civil service laws to protect Americans from the spoils system, and allows Trump to fire and replace all federal employees with his own loyalists. An Ayn Rand nightmare, it would eliminate the Departments of Commerce and Education, nearly all environmental laws, and “deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and directing the DOJ to pursue Trump adversaries.” A fascist coup, in other words.

They also promote in full the demands of the vile anti-American zealots that call themselves “Christian Nationalists,” eliminating rights to abortion or contraception, the right to be gay or other-gendered, and eliminating separation of church and state, eliminating rights for all but a small percentage of Christians.

They are spending billions through their vast propaganda network, backed by the pack of Australian Nazis who run Fox News.

Bad actors abound. The Republicans, at Trump’s behest, deliberately scrapped the immigration bill that they themselves wrote, in order to try to keep “the border crisis” a campaign issue. Fox and other minutes are having five-minutes-of-hate sessions every half hour to keep the haters and bigots stirred up.

The House Republicans have nearly all co-sponsored HR 431, which declares that personhood begins at conception and thus abortion and birth control are murder.

Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia plan to slash oil production, hoping to drive up prices which the public, at the behest of the extreme right, will blame Biden for. They already have senile stooges like Trump and Chuck Grassley declaring that Biden “slashed oil production” and so prices will rise. The fact is US domestic oil production is the highest it has been in history. Meanwhile, does anybody believe Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russian want Trump because “he will stand tall for America.” Or do they just want a moronic and treasonous dupe? Which makes more sense to you? Viktor Orbán has become a major figure in GOP circles, and I’m sure he does it because he just loves America, right?

But Republicans are liars. Remember that. What ever it is, they will lie about it. Immigrants have lower crime rates, less gun violence, and add a net $40 billion to the economy. The liars on Fox News say otherwise, of course.

It’s going to get ugly, and fast. They already busted a string of websites yesterday purporting to be local news outlets that were actually run by Russia to interfere in election coverage. That happened yesterday. Google “Florida Observer” for details.

Remember: Republicans lie, and a vote for Trump is a vote for Treason.

The David Fallacy — Why (some) zealots support Trump

The David Fallacy

Why (some) zealots support Trump

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 16th, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

They held the Iowa caucuses yesterday, and I don’t regard the results as being of any particular importance, given how unrepresentative they are of the country as a whole. (Mike Huckabee won in 2008, Rick Santorum won in 2012, and Ted Cruz in 2016.) The only reason Trump won in 2020 was that he ran unopposed, about the only way he can actually win an election.

He essentially ran unopposed this time, since the only other significant candidates were a pair of “me-too” clingers who ran as Trump-lite: Ron DeSantis and Nicki Haley. Those two dead-enders managed to get 40% of the Republican vote, which shows just how weak Trump really is.

Haley’s birth-name was Nimarata Nikki Randhawa, and MSNBC actually showed one voter opining that it wouldn’t be right for a “Hin-doo” to be president. Despite that, Haley was mad because MSNBC was “dividing us by race” for simply pointing out that country white evangelicals aren’t going to strongly support Haley because of her skin color. Haley, MSNBC didn’t create those bigoted clowns. And trust me, they weren’t watching Joy Reid anyway. She’s not one of the ‘good ones’ in their books.

DeSantis was already a bad joke, between his elevator clown boots and picking a fight with a cartoon mouse and losing. He wasn’t as big on god-flogging as Trump, so wasn’t seen as sufficiently godly.

So Trump fetched up with 51% of the vote. I was expecting him to get 60% or more, between the high number of fools in the GOP and the weak field arrayed against him. So even if the ratings-driving media is trying to hype his chances, the results show his fundamental weakness.

MSNBC devoted five full hours to this non-story, and I managed to miss most of it so I could play Solitaire and watch an animated movie. (I would point out that while I didn’t do so good playing Solitaire, the movie, Maboroshi, on Netflix, was pretty damned good).

But I did catch one gem that made MSNBC’s entire wasted night worth a glance. Barely able to contain their laughter, Joy and Rachel Maddow explained “The King David Hypothesis.”

King David lived around 1,000 BCE, and yes, there is evidence that he actually did exist, although outside of notoriously unreliable holy writ, little is known about him.

But the religious accounts are satisfyingly florid. A simple shepherd, he killed the giant Goliath with a slingshot, and got noticed by the reigning king, Saul. Saul took him in to the palace, but then expelled him when he decided David was plotting to kill him and steal his throne. But before then, Saul has made David rich for killing the giant, and among other marriages, David marries Saul’s younger daughter, Michael. The dowery is 100 Philistinian heads, although accounts differ as to whether that was cranial-type heads or the other kind, foreskins. Either way, it made a lot of Philistines very unhappy. He’s also got about eight other wives and unknown numbers of concubines of varying gender, something that’s always fun to point out to bigoted morons who want America to observe “biblical marriage” only.

Jehovah gets annoyed at Saul for failing to commit genocide (the Amalekites, look it up) and sends the angel Samuel to name David king. After various intrigues and production of a family lineage that makes it apt as well as physically likely that he was the father of the Abrahamic religions, he becomes King, and is sufficiently murderous and Machiavellian enough to keep even Jehovah happy. Between the smiting and the slutting, David made Trump look restrained and faithful.

All right, so intellectually, morally, and romantically, David was a hot mess. (For his wives and concubines, “consent” was not an option.) But he’s “beloved by God” and the father of the true religions, all 15,000 of them that we know about. What to do, what to do? Zealots hate ethical quandaries.

Thus was born the King David Hypothesis. God chose David because he was flawed, and the fact that he was flawed showed that God could make David have a good heart and be a great king despite all the murdering and raping and conniving. Because of God, David was great because God made him so and his flaws just showed how good God was at his job.

Thus and so, the reasoning goes, even though Trump is flawed (the polite way of saying “a hot mess”), God has chosen him to be Der Leader to show that God can take even the vilest spittoon of a person and make him great. So even though Trump is about as Christian as a rabid pig, Christians are duty bound to support him because God wants him to be great.

Ah, the religious mind! The wonder of it all!

Meanwhile, the portion of America that isn’t religiously insane continue to watch Trump slide. He went on to claim this was his third, and greatest win in Iowa (neither statement was true), and his main lawyers in the trials about tax fraud and defamation of E. Jean Carroll, Joe Tacopina and his two partners, Chad Seigel and Matthew DeOreo, up and quit the same day of the caucuses, showing his continued inability to keep lawyers for any length of time. Even lawyers have standards, even if the standard is only “Fuck you, pay me.”

Meanwhile, Trump continues his mastery of the religiously gullible. The morning after his win in the caucuses, he posted “President Trump: Suspend my campaign?” The grift is if he doesn’t get a million donations, he’ll drop out of the race.

Fortunately, the religiously insane are actually a small part of the population. Even amongst the GOP ultra-committed who turned out in -30F wind chills to caucus, he only managed half the vote against a nothing field.

So don’t let these nuts alarm you. He’s going down.

 

Low-Rent Gods and Men — Does Trump reveal God’s Purpose?

Low-Rent Gods and Men

Does Trump reveal God’s Purpose?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 27th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

 

A survey conducted by Denison University political scientist Paul Djupe found around 30 percent of Americans believe Trump “was anointed by God to become president.” Thirty percent.

Now, I don’t know anything about the methodology of this poll. Frankly, I doubt the number is anywhere near that high. Ten percent, tops. Trump’s support among the religious is pretty much limited to evangelicals, and they only make up 25% of the population. And the same Economist article that cited that number also reported, “In a Pew poll in 2021, more than a third of white evangelicals said the government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state.” Outside of that group, the notion that scrapping separation of church and state and making Trump some sort of god/emporer drops through the basement. I doubt very much 10% of Catholics buy into that, much less mainstream Protestants, non-Christian and unaffiliated/secular.

Still, there’s a lot of Americans who do believe that nonsense. One of the stranger ones is the notion that there are seven “mountains” to a godly life: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. Daemons controlled those, but Trump has already climbed and taken over entertainment, business, media, government and family. This group thinks he’s taken over religion, as well. That would leave education to surmount.

OK, let’s take a pause while you get your breath back. Those of you still laughing, imagine being in bed with Marjorie Taylor-Greene. Yes, that’s a cruel thing to do to you, but if you don’t stop laughing you might hurt yourself.

There’s a saying popular amongst us secular sorts: “Science asks questions that demand an answer. Religion provides answers that demand no questions.” Obviously, that’s a simplification. There are many people of faith who do ask questions, including of their own beliefs. And some scientists are as hidebound and rigid in their intellectual structure as any 16th century preacher. But the fact remains that the true first commandment in many branches of religion is “Thou shalt not question.” Obviously, this is a fertile demographic for opportunists and demagogues.

Let’s see about those mountains that Trump is supposedly climbing. I’ll start out by noting that you’re far more likely to find a sea slug at the peak of Everest, just so you aren’t burdened by any suspense about the following.

Entertainment: Trump was a B-list celebrity with a reality TV show. The highest Neilson rating it ever got was 7.0. It never was anywhere near the most popular show in its timeslot.

Media: Trump had Faux News, and now, having cost them $787 million in costs from lying on his behalf, he doesn’t even have that. He has Truth Social, which is pretty pathetic, and lunatic-fringe outfits like Newsmax and OANN, both of which face massive defamation suits of their own.

Business: Until Elon Musk came along, Trump had lost more money than any individual in the history of America. He took over three casinos and they all went bust within a few years. Casinos are licenses to mint money! He’s been found guilty of tax fraud and is awaiting sentencing. He settled a vast class action suit for fraud for Trump University days before he took office. He is banned from running charities after he was found to have stolen from a children’s cancer charity he ran. Business attracts thieves, con artists and other filth, and it certainly attracted Trump. But he never was any good at it.

Entertainment: Well, his venality and endless personal scandals kept cartoonists and humorists busy for decades, so I suppose there’s that. And he attracts eyeballs, although the leading reasons are “What’s that idiot done now?” and “Oh, fuck, NO!”

Family: he’s had three wives and at least a dozen mistresses. He was banging Stormy Daniels while Melania was carrying his youngest son. His niece, Mary Trump, openly despises him. He buried one of his exes in an unmarked grave on one of his golf courses, and its rumored that her coffin contains incriminating evidence Trump wanted to go away forever.

Government: Yes, he was a one term president. He won despite losing the popular vote, and never has won a popular vote. The economy contracted during his term, the worst since Hoover, and the deficit exploded. He turned the Supreme Court into a sad joke. And because of the cowardice of mainstream Republicans, that party is now home to traitors, religious nuts, violent extremists, and the most ignorant fools America can scrape up.

Religion: Well, define “religion.” If love of money, power and self-aggrandizement is a religion, then Trump qualifies. Claiming to have god on his side doesn’t count. Nearly every dictator and tyrant in the history of this sad world has claimed to have god on his side. Fundamentalists cannot question and cannot learn. They are fodder and feeding ground for monsters. In stressful times, they are enough to put a Hitler or a Cromwell in power.

That leaves Education. Again, the term is subjective. When the evangelicals talk about that particular mountain, they have something entirely different from what most people think of when you mention education. Math and science are not a part of that particular equation. For that matter, the word ‘equation’ isn’t, either. Learning biblical writ, obeying and never questioning are considered virtues, and a child who questions is a child who must be beaten. So Trump may surmount Education, although, like Religion, it might be in a form none of us would recognize as such.

If ten percent of the population swallow the nonsense of Trump being “the Will of God,” that’s disturbing and a sad reflection on humanity in general. Thirty percent would be catastrophic, a certain sign that a culture has fully decompensated and slid into madness. Mass jailing and mass executions will follow, along with widespread misery. So that’s why I don’t buy that poll. America is having problems, but it isn’t in hospice.

But never forget that this type of religious fervor is toxic, and an infection in even the healthiest of societies.

Frank Zappa and the Dominionists — He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write!

Frank Zappa and the Dominionists

He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write!

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 19th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

While noodling around Facebook today, I came across this quote, attributed to the legendary musician Frank Zappa: “Socialism produces bad music, bad art, social stagnation, and really unhappy people.”

Well, that didn’t really sound like Zappa, who, while a staunch idealistic libertarian, openly admired the freedoms and personal spaciousness afforded by such socialist countries such as Finland, Sweden, France or Denmark. He would have understood that socialism isn’t what most Americans think it is. On that, he did say: “Communism doesn’t work because it is out of phase with human nature. Are we going to wake up one day to find this statement equally true when applied to the concept of Western democracy?” He did know the difference. He was a fierce defender of personal and artistic rights, and respected societies that observed those rights, having little interest in the political apparatus that was involved. On that he said, “Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.” Oh, yeah. Current events sure support that notion.

I did look to see if the socialism quote held up to scrutiny, since as Geoffrey Chaucer once famously observed, “Depende not what thou mightst encountre upon thee internets and lendist not unto it thy minde, for it bee swarming with crappe.” The only source I could find (uncited) was on a ‘mens’ rights website. So safe to assume he never said it.

I doubt Frank would be impressed with what passes for Libertarianism these days, and may well have seen it as fascism in drag, a cynical ploy by moneyed interests to strip government and people of power in order to create a power vacuum for churches and corporations to fill. He regarded those as threats to freedoms and creativity, saying: “The biggest threat to America today is not communism, it’s moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that’s happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe. […] When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view, and if that code happens to be very very right wing, almost toward Attila the Hun.”

Now, comparing the fascist right to Attila the Hun would be considered mild. We have a Hitler-spouting authoritarian as the lead candidate for President in one major party, and the second-in-line for the entire country an open Dominionist who wants to subject the citizenry to his own toxic brand of Christianity.

I suspect Zappa would be appalled.

Certainly the Founders would be. Mike Johnson, the so-called Speaker who wants Jesus as King of America said, “The separation of church and state is a misnomer. People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite.”

He’s referring, of course, to the Danbury letter in which Jefferson wrote, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.” While Jefferson was reassuring the Danbury Baptists that government would not be used against them, what they were concerned about were non-Baptists. Non-Baptists, using government to repress them or punish them for not being of the True Faith. They, like Jefferson and nearly all of the Founders, came from the British Isles, which had, at that time, a long and storied history of various factions within Christianity seizing secular power and using it to promote themselves and punish and repress others. Jefferson in particular loathed Britain’s Test Act, which denied public office to Catholics, Jews, and other non-believers. He insisted on the “No Religious Test” phrase in the Constitution, which, by its own language, is the only phrase in the Constitution which cannot be amended. “shall EVER be…” is what follows. He wanted anyone of any faith to be able to hold office, but he also wanted to make damned sure that none of those office-holders would abuse it to promote their own faith at the expense of others.

Far right nativists in America like to claim they are of “Scots-Irish” descent, a term that makes about as little sense as “Judeo-Christian.” Scotland and Ireland are two different lands, culturally and socially, and as a rule don’t like one another very much. But both, along with England, have people whose ancestors were punished, imprisoned, sometimes killed for being a member of the wrong religion at the wrong time. For Jefferson and the Danbury Baptists, that was recent history. In fact, in the UK it was also future history: freedom of religion wasn’t formally codified until 1998. Until then, it was illegal for a Catholic to be prime minister (yes, Tony Blair lied about his religious beliefs to hold office), and the monarch must still be Anglican. Scotland and Wales didn’t have separation of church and state until the early 1920s. Every year, England celebrates Guy Fawkes day. It’s a harmless and festive event now, fun for the whole family, but it started out celebrating Catholic traitors by burning them in effigy.

Dominionists don’t understand their their own country nor their own religion. And they don’t know history, which teaches that all theocracies, without exception, become cruel, corrupt and incompetent because the source authority is forever silent and thus easy for monsters, such as Johnson and Trump, to “interpret.” Dominionists are the yellow snow of politics.

Frank Zappa would have used something stronger than “Attila the Hun” to describe it. Cromwell, perhaps, or Pope Benedict IX, or even Hitler.

I’m glad he isn’t here to see this. But oh! The songs he could write!

Netanyahu versus Hamas — Terrorists and Tyrants versus the world

Netanyahu versus Hamas

Terrorists and Tyrants versus the world

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 4th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I was one of the first voices expressing concern for the welfare of the civilians in Gaza in the face of a reaction by Benjamin Netanyahu that I knew, based on the man’s record, would be vicious and murderous and disproportionate, yes, even disproportionate to the hideous crimes Hamas committed.

We’ve been to this rodeo before, of course. After the attacks on the Twin Towers which killed some three thousand innocent people, America overreacted with two wars against countries that played no role in the 9/11 attacks, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people and setting America back, politically and diplomatically, by decades.

Mind you, America wasn’t ruled by a vicious authoritarian tyrant. It was run by a soulless and opportunistic capitalist, Dick Cheney, and his feckless puppet president, George W. Bush.

They had some of the same motives for their response that Netanyahu has now. They wanted to show they were responding in order to deflect from misjudgments and incompetence that a) gave rise to a determined foe intent on asymmetric warfare and b) provided an opportunity for said foes to attack. They, like Netanyahu, wanted to ride a huge wave of rage and revulsion against the attacks. They might have shared that wave of outrage, but mostly they needed to spackle over their unpopular and corrupt regimes.

But where the two governments parted was that where Cheney and Bush were sniffing after money and economic power, Netanyahu is motivated by hatred and a willingness to use fear to punish his enemies and frighten the rest into submission. He is cut from the same mold as every tyrant in history, like Orbán or Jong-Il or Stalin or—yes—Hitler. I got my measure of the man 30 years ago, when he went out of his way to desecrate a Mosque as a part of this campaign. He views Palestinians – and it’s safe to say all Moslems – exactly the way Hitler viewed Jews; both as objects of personal hate, and as scapegoats to try to ride public hatred to power, a tidal wave of vomit and vile.

So the immediacy of his response is no surprise. Given his way, he would cheerfully slaughter every Palestinian on the face of the Earth. And he’s doing it in the name of a nation founded on the premise that monsters like him must never again be allowed to wreak havoc on entire populations out of hatred.

Which brings us to a second great branching. Most Israelis, in overwhelming numbers, have NOT forgotten the lessons of history. They see what Netanyahu is doing and are appalled. When 9/11 happened, Bush’s popularity ratings went from 35% approval to the mid 90s literally overnight. Netanyahu’s approval ratings were around 35% and have actually DROPPED since the attack on Gaza began.

Hamas are terrorists and must be stopped. Netanyahu is a tyrant, and he, too, must be stopped. In a just world, he and his main supporters would be locked up for life in a cell with the leaders of Hamas. Let them sort it out for themselves.

The people of Gaza are not responsible for the actions of Hamas, just as the people of Israel are not responsible for Netanyahu. Yes, both were elected, both by a relatively small percentage of the population. Are you responsible for Trump? Two-thirds of Americans despise the man, don’t want him anywhere near power ever again. If he were to reobtain power, his death toll would easily exceed Netanyahu’s, since he is a vengeful, petty, vicious little man who has far more enemies and needs far more scapegoats than does Netanyahu. Nonetheless, there’s a very real risk he could end up in the Oval Office again. Are you responsible? Would it be right to bomb you or launch terrorist attacks against you because you have a despicable leader?

The conflict has given rise to all sorts of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Both, I note, are phrases so common I didn’t need to teach them to my spell checker, and isn’t that a depressing indication of human fallibility? We all heard about the insane bastard that killed the six year old boy here in the States for “being Palestinian,” but the grim reality is that all people who look Semitic or even dress differently are at risk from people filled with ersatz moral rage over the conflict. Swastikas are getting painted on Synagogues and other places associated with Jews. Anyone with brown skin and a beard is at risk, or any woman with a head coverings. (It was only three generations ago that most London women wore scarves over their heads when they went out. Would they dare do so in today’s “free” America?) Sikhs are being targeted, even though they are neither Jewish or Islamic. But they look different. That’s enough for the “Haters against Hate” crowd.

I don’t know many Jews who support what Netanyahu is doing (and their numbers are dwindling) and I don’t know any Moslems who support Hamas. The vast majority are simply appalled at the killing and want it to stop—just like most of the rest of us.

Only a fool or a hater supports Netanyahu or Hamas. If you want to spray paint swastikas on images of Netanyahu, or send Hamas messages that they are najis and a disgrace in the eyes of Allah, go right ahead. It isn’t very nice, but at least you aren’t attacking innocents.

But what’s happening in Gaza isn’t a Jewish thing. It isn’t an Islamic thing. It isn’t an Israeli thing, not really. And it isn’t a Palestinian thing.

The people of Gaza, and the people of Israel, and their respective faiths are just innocents caught in the grindstone between terrorists and tyrants.

Too many innocents—on both sides and on all sides—have died already.

Dominion Over Us — By your nose you be known

Bryan Zepp Jamieson
October 28th 2023
www.zeppscommentaries.online

Mike Johnson is our new speaker, 51, a Dominionist, a MAGAt, and an insurrectionist supporter. In short, nobody who should be within a thousand miles of American power.
I wasn’t going to waste an essay on him for the simple reason that just about every person in this country who loves the Constitution is loudly warning everyone just what a danger this person is to our rights and freedoms.
But then I came across this quote from Johnson: “This is not about the people themselves. I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘… People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.”
Well, OK, then. Game on.
Citing weird biblical beliefs is nothing new, of course. Nor is citing the hypocrisy of most bible pounders. The very first episode of West Wing had President Bartlett give a wonderful example of this when pressed to embrace biblical values for America by a pushy fundie.
But it’s always worth selecting a few choice things the bible mandates people believe that aren’t exactly congruent with 21st century American values. So here’s a list of things that Mike Johnson apparently professes to believe.
A man can force his wife to get an abortion if he believes she has been unfaithful. Numbers 5:11-31.
It’s even worse if a man is unfaithful to his wife: If a man cheateth on his wife, or vice versa, both the man and the woman must die. Leviticus 20:10. Helluva note: the poor wife gets smote, too. Or is it “the other woman.” Who dies? Melania or Stormy? I wonder if Johnson wants to form a wife-smiting committee or just make it part of Health and Human Resources.
Churches can eliminate those handicap parking spots. People who have flat noses, or are blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God. Leviticus 21:17-18. I’m sure that one mega-church pastor who has been whinging about handicap access can help Congress on that one. Have a law where if the tip of the nose fails to protrude more than 1.5 inches from the back of the nostrils, ain’t no praying allowed for that freak of nature! God is pleased by lordly beaks. I think Johnson may be in trouble himself over that one.
Another one that Johnson might find awkward is Leviticus 19:27: Don’t cut your hair nor shave.
The bible says If you find out a city worships a different god, destroy the city and kill all of its inhabitants, even the animals. Deuteronomy 13:12-16. OK, I can see killing all the cats, especially the black ones. Christianity has a long and storied history of killing cats, tossing them off towers and whatnot. That makes perfect sense. But the dogs, too?
Pagan cities don’t do well when it’s the Israelites smiting them. The bible suggests ripping infants from their mothers’ wombs and dashing their brains out against rocks. Hosea 13-16. Even though it calls fetuses “infants,” the anti-abortion crowd don’t like to cite that one. I think we can guess what Johnson thinks Israel should do to Gaza. And their little dogs, too!
The blob squad like to run around claiming that ‘libruls’ want to abort babies after they’re born.
Anyone who actually believes that has to be a little bit psychotic, but Johnson may have to make that a new law, it seems. “If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28 then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” Leviticus 26:27-30. That one should produce some interesting debate in Congress. Do you have to eat ALL your sons and daughters, or just one per transgression? And is there a cut-off age where you don’t have to eat them, but simply be stoned to death instead? Do kids with flat noses count?
Women should be generally submissive and should be quiet, never teach or hold any authority over men. They should just be silent. 1 Timothy 2:12. OK, I’m looking at Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Lauren Boebert, and I’m thinking Johnson could make good use of this. I wonder if his first act will be to remove all female members of Congress and the Vice President?
While the bible does demand that all non-believers be put to death, there is a loophole. If you are lucky enough to have hemorrhoids and rats, get them bronzed and send them on in as an offering. Or as the bible says, “Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land.” 1 Samuel 6:4-5. I wonder if those are tax deductible. Mike? You’re the God Squad guy. Whaddaya say?
The NRA isn’t going to be happy with Mike’s godlaw. According to Exodus 22, you can only use lethal force to defend your home at night. Now, how can you have a happy and stable society if paranoid whacks with weapons of war can’t blast away at any stray noise they hear outside their front door at 11am? Crime never sleeps, you know!
So: this is the zealot creature who is now two bullets from the Oval Office.
Sleep tight.

 

 

We’re Not From the Government — And We’re Not Here to Help

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 6th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

In the wake of the latest mass shooting in Texas, Greg Abbott, putative governor of that benighted state, blamed the shooting on the government.

My comment on Facebook was “Someone notify this stupid bastard that in Texas, HE is ‘the government.’”

I drew a good response from one fellow who wrote, “That’s one of the strangest things these aholes are allowed to get away with when addressing their base; ‘It’s somebody else’s problem. Sure you elected me to fix the problems, but that still doesn’t make them my problems.’”

Well, that’s not by accident. I wrote back, “Ever since the Kochs hit on the realization that the only way they could seize power was to divorce government from the people. Thus elected Republicans would pretend that they were the freedom fighters and ‘government’ the enemy they struggled against, And as they made government less representative, less helpful, less honest, they would say, ‘See? Our self-fulfilling prophecy has come true!’ Only fools elect people to government who want to destroy government.”

Did the Founders consider this when they wrote the Constitution?

Of course they did. They recognized that in order to have a viable representative Democracy, there were two major social forces that had to be curbed and held in check: The aristocracy, and the churches. James Madison, considered the chief architect of the Constitution wrote some twenty years later, “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.” While he was working on the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris (and an early supporter of what eventually became the French Revolution) petitioned Madison strongly for a bill of rights, one of which would include what amounted to a 100% real property estate tax in order to prevent the rise of an aristocracy like the ones he saw enslaving England and France. (Unfortunately, that one didn’t make the list.)

Churches are still churches, and no matter how well-intentioned, breed malevolent zealots. The aristocracy goes by a wide variety of names: Royalty, plutocrats, corporations, fascists, ‘captains of industry,’ and more recently, “disrupters” and “libertarians.”

Both are fueled by authoritarian impulses, and want, among other things, unswerving loyalties from the masses, a captive audience, and a complete lack of accountability.

Madison and Jefferson, along with most of the Founders, saw the twin threats to freedom for what they were, and resolved to keep them contained.

The results were mixed; many states sneaked through laws against blasphemy and enforced cruel dictates against behavior that didn’t hurt anyone. The aristocracy caused one civil war in support of slavery, the ultima thule of capitalism. They’ve crashed the economy dozens of times, including one that very nearly destroyed the country. They, too, have pushed for cruel and repressive laws, and demanded authority they neither deserved or could handle responsibly or fairly. But overall, the dream of Jefferson and Madison kept those forces of tyranny somewhat in check.

In the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, with the reputation of fascism and capitalism in ruins with the American public, the wealthy elites formed an alliance with the one authoritarian power nexus that working people didn’t instinctively recognize as an adversary: Religion. The preachers, stymied by popular skepticism toward cross-wavers in power, were quite willing to accept an allegiance with the plutocrats. The plutocrats needed help in convincing people that the government was inept, overbearing, and an enemy of the people. They knew the only effective way to do that was have their preachers teach that government is evil. They had jovial clowns like Ronald Reagan to quip, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” and to persuade people that turning over the tax revenue to the super-rich would somehow help the poor.

What they needed was some sort of high-octane moral issue. The ones that galvanized the public, such as civil rights, the environment, and education, weren’t what they had in mind. They wanted angry pitchfork wavers who wouldn’t threaten profits or strengthen the labor pool.

They hit on abortion, an issue of importance only to the type of loons who felt dancing should be a criminal offense, those, and the Catholic Church, which still hadn’t gotten over Galileo.

After that, all they needed was an extreme propaganda network that could block truth and promote lies. Enter Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch, the world’s greatest merchants of hate.

The message was a drumbeat: government bad and evil, profits and gawd good.

So when Abbott blames a mess he contributed to making on “the government,” nobody should be surprised. Republicans have spent generations working to make government weak and ineffectual, and then bitterly blaming it for not being strong and effective. Although when pressed to make government strong and effective, say through gun control laws, effective laws against monopolies and dishonest business practices, or protect the rights of minorities, they claim this would make government overbearing and tyrannical. It’s a three-card monte of a philosophy.

They want government limited to only defending their interests, and only a fool thinks the interests of billionaires or televangelists coincide in any way with the interests of the average person.

All autocracies, whether theocratic, or fascist, or (usually) both rapidly become corrupt, cruel, and detrimental to the security and safety of the society they have sought to enslave.

Need proof? Looks at the studied viciousness and cruelty of the anti-abortion freaks now that they’ve been unleashed. Look at the corrupt members of the Supreme Court that unleashed them. Look at the blossoming corruption in the financial sector, and the next coming crash.

Authoritarians are authoritarians, and waving crosses and flags doesn’t make them “more American.” They are the antithesis of what America is meant to be about. They are not your friends, they are not your protectors, and they will make your life hell if they take over, just as has happened throughout history.

America is not immune to this nonsense; they’ve just had the incredible good fortune to be guided by people who saw religion and landed wealth for the threats that they are.

Until now.

 

Cornered Rats — At their most vicious and dangerous

Cornered Rats

At their most vicious and dangerous

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 9th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Despite, but largely because of a mounting tide of anger and disgust, the GOP have been doubling down on their most corrupt and unpopular items.

This past week Tennessee took the headlines by expelling two members, both of whom were black, for the ‘crime’ of protesting gun violence. A third member, who was white and thus incapable of committing a crime, was not expelled. This is the same ‘legislative body’ that previously tolerated the presence of pedophiles, rapists, and one member who was caught urinating on the seats of other members. That must be the ‘proper decorum’ that black representatives can’t uphold. In the past month, a member suggested that capital punishment include lynching. Lynching not as a capital crime, but as a state-sanctioned form of punishment.

Slappy Thomas was busted for covering up twenty years of lavish gifts and trips from a billionaire, aptly named Crow, who happens to be a Hitler admirer. Slappy’s defence was they was just good friends, and they had been doing this for years. Turned out Slappy’s cozened junkets were first noticed some twenty years ago, and he dealt with the potential scandal then by simply ceasing to file the legally-required reports. The liberal media had more important things to report on, like Obama wearing a tan suit and putting Dijon mustard on his hot dogs.

“Just good friends.” Because Hitler admirers always like to pal around with Negroes who are married to white women, right? Slappy is exactly what Hitler had in mind when he talked about the Master Race, you know.

The Trump indictment showed his waning influence and the growing realization on the far right that maybe they don’t speak for most Americans. Armpit Maggie turned up at the New York City demonstration, expecting to be the new leader for a sea of people outraged at the crucifixion of Trump. What she got was the usual small collection of nuts and weirdos, a motley collection dwarfed by large numbers of chanting, whistle-blowing counter-demonstrators. She retreated, in obvious confusion, within minutes.

The anti-freedom zealots had another wish granted by Trump when a religiously insane judge, one Matthew Kacsmaryk, ruled that mifepristone, a pill used in over half of all abortions in the US for decades, be taken off the shelved because when the FDA approved it over twenty years earlier, they didn’t factor in a right wing lunacy that women would be destroyed by the resulting grief and guilt of aborting that poor little baby. The blob squad simultaneously believe that most women will abort the day before the baby is due just on a whim, and never look back.

It’s the sort of demented thinking that demonstrates why religious zealots should never be allowed within a thousand miles of anything approaching actual authority over the lives of others.

The hate campaign against the LGBTQ community and, for gawd knows what reason, drag queens continues unabated. There are calls not only to cut them off from medical coverage and school activities, but to outlaw them altogether. Let’s see, I bet if we asked Thomas’ buddy Crow about that, he would be quick to mention the Enabling Acts, or the Nuremberg polices. But that was different: they were after Jews and Commies then, not fags and Mexicans. Totally different. Why, when the camps are made, they’ll use new and improved Zyclon C. Nothing at all like the Nazis. What’s more, they have God’s approval for all this. They’ll prove it by stamping “Got Mit Uns” on all their rifles and army belt buckles. Just fags and Mexicans. Not real people. Oh, and liberals Muslims Unionists the disabled Socialists pot smokers and Joos. But no real people.

The Republicans who have realized that their policies are unpopular (or, if you prefer, almost universally hated and despised) are dealing with it by removing those pesky voters from the equation. The GOP have been fighting for years to gut the Voting Rights Act (and finally succeeded) and gerrymander (see Wisconsin and Pennsylvania for details. And Florida. And Michigan. And Missouri…and on and on.) They are dealing with state referendums to protect abortion and other rights by making it difficult to impossible to get such referendums on the ballot.

In Wisconsin, a heavily contested election for the Supreme Count resulted in a big win for the candidate not underwritten by the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues. Janet Protasiewicz beat Dan Kelly by a whopping ten points. However, in an obscure state legislative race, the Republican won by 1.7% of the vote, giving the heavily gerrymandered body a supermajority. Republicans promptly vowed to impeach and remove Protasiewicz from office, presumably on the day she takes office, because you can’t have women running around aborting left and right and then killing themselves because of the shame. Tain’t Christian or something.

Right now, similar moves by authoritarians in France and Israel have resulted in weeks-long mass demonstrations and threats to topple the regimes. I can only hope the same thing would happen in Wisconsin if the state lege tried this particular stunt.

If it did, it might help prevent a similar convulsion nationwide. Americans won’t give up their freedoms and rights to zealots and ideologues without a fight.

The reason we’re seeing such blatant and horrific extremism is the Republicans know this is their last chance. If they can’t steal the country now, they may have to wait another 100 years for such an opportunity to come along.

They are desperate. They are cornered. They are at their most dangerous.

Fox News — Where whirlwinds go to die

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 2nd, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.–Hosea 8:7

The term “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” was first popularized by Hillary Clinton in 1998. She didn’t invent the specific term: it was in use in the US at least three years earlier, and in the UK in 1991. The far right, stung, tried to ridicule the phrase, with various deplorables going on line to proudly announce they were part of the VRWC. It didn’t deflect the validity of the phrase—people just pointed to Fox, to Rush Limbaugh, to the panoply of other right wing outlets: Regnery Press, the Scaife media empire, the vast array of right wing think tanks, including the Federalist Society, the Kochs, and the empire of the Christian falangist right, then known as the Moral Majority.

It was around long before 1991, of course. America has always had an authoritarian right wing streak, dating back to the “Know Nothing” party and slavers before the Civil War, and Southern Democrats and groups such as the KKK after. That in turn morphed into the German American Bund, Father Coughlin, and a rise of radio hatemongers. After the second world war, with the term “Fascist” so thoroughly discredited, the far right appropriated the title of “conservative” and began a general infiltration of the actual conservative party in America, which was caught off guard because the new breed of fascists launched by Koch money in the form of the hyper-patriotic John Birch Society were flag wavers and bible pounders. Patriots and God-fearers couldn’t be bad, right? And like most Americans, conservatives thought they were immune to the power of propaganda. Only slave populations like those of the Soviet Union could fall for alluring lies, right? Americans were educated and smart and laughed at propaganda.

Fascist plutocrats such as Rupert Murdoch, the Kochs, and Richard Scaife knew better, and took the lessons taught by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and turned a blare of misinformation on the American public.

Their target was the low-information voter. The methods were time honored: repeat simple lies over and over; persuade their targets that they, and only they, possessed “family values” and held true to American ideals. Sneer at liberals, intellectuals, and non-Christians and imply that they were hostile to America and American values. Explain that public schools, unions, and public interest groups were “communist.” Persuade people that marginalized groups (such as African Americans) were responsible for their poor pay and lousy jobs, and not the plutocrats who spent tons of money in hundreds of outlets to convince them of this.

They targeted the poorly-educated, the impoverished, the fundamentalists, the disaffected and the resentful. They wanted an army of angry morons, not to put too fine a point on it.

But the art of riling up people and getting them angry has a trap. People eventually become numbed to the same provocative speech, repeated over and over, and concepts that once might have created angry mobs just become a background hum in a dull life. So they have to keep topping themselves. Liberalism isn’t just unAmerican; it’s ANTI-American. Blacks don’t want to go to your schools and work in your jobs; they want to take them over. People getting $500 on food stamps are the reason the country is broke, and not the billionaires who pay little or no taxes. Abortion isn’t just unpleasant; it’s murder!

Not enough. People get inured. And of course in instances where the far right could prevail, such as turning back civil rights or banning abortion, they didn’t dare actually try to win because their followers would just look at them and say, “OK, we won. Now what?” Reagan and Bush Junior both ran on anti-abortion platforms, and neither tried to implement change. Bush Junior and the radicals in the House tried to privatize Social Security and turn Medicare into an insurance scam and it cost them dearly in the next election.

It was one thing to bellow angry imprecations into the wind, quite another to act on them.

Newt Gingrich took the GOP to a posture of wild and mostly idiotic stances, blind intransigence, and endless scandal-mongering. He was the face of the VRWC, as Hillary Clinton so deftly noted. Not surprisingly, a lot of this platform blew up in right wing faces (the “Contract for America” quickly became a joke, people noticed the GOP was more interested in posturing rather than governing, and the effort to impeach Bill Clinton actually made him more popular. Newt ended up leaving in disgrace.

But the right wing noise machine was there to soothe the injuries of exposed hypocrisy, social amorality, and blind opposition to providing direction to the country. It was all the fault of the liberal media and social justice warriors, they explained. Newt was a victim. The GOP was a victim. You are a victim.

It worked, for a while.

Then Obama was elected, and suddenly every racist coward in the country was scrambling aboard the GOP noise machine to air their grievances. The tone of the VRWC, never sunny and warm, turned far darker and uglier.

The GOP recruited the racists, and the conspiracy theorists. The latter, being the most credulous and dim-witted of the population, were eager to join powerful forces who would at least pretend to validate their crackpot and often flat-out crazed notions. Yes, the government is lying about UFOs. Yes, Jews secretly control the world. Yes, the Moon landing was faked. Yes, you can turn water into gasoline with this simple little pill.

Enter Donald Trump, amoral, narcissistic, and vicious, but wily enough to know that all he had to do was stir the shit just a bit, and he would have an army of howling, screeching lunatics and toy Nazis set to do his bidding.

Which we saw on January 6th, 2021.

And it is still cresting with the House taken over by the worst of the worst, regular Republicans too weak and cowardly to resist, and the claims getting wilder and wilder, the proposed “solutions” more and more draconian and ridiculous. Ban the Democrat [sic] Party! Jews are out to replace us! They have space lasers! M&M candies are attacking American sexual purity! Litter boxes in school bathrooms! The rest of the world thinks America has gone nuts. It’s actually a smallish group of nuts, but then, so were Hitler’s followers in 1933, or Lenin’s in 1919. They are dangerous, no matter how ridiculous they look.

But the Fox News implosion, combined with the tidal wave of accountability facing Trump and his minions, may cause that wave to break and foam and froth harmlessly back out to sea.

The fascist right spent years cultivating morons. They succeeded. Then the morons took over. Hosea 8:7.

And now, hopefully the end to the fascist right-wing madness is in sight.

Money for Nothing — A quantum quandary

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 25th, 2023

A few years back, a religious friend of mine wondered if, by being an atheist, I might be suffering from a lack of imagination. How, she wanted to know, could I look at the wonder and diversity of the universe and not see God’s hand in it?

Well, OK. I have the type of sense of humor where I played with saying, “The universe? What a lame thing! Just a big old nothingburger! I could have designed better with a compass and a blunt pencil!”

Of course, if you want to look at all of existence and ascribe it to one deity, or many, or none, all answers are equally valid. But anyone who claims to unequivocally KNOW the answer is either delusional or lying.

But my friend’s line of thinking was readily apparent. If the universe proved the existence of God, then the existence of God proved the inerrancy of the Bible. I pointed out that the Biblical view of the universe was that stars were just little pinpricks of light in the sky, perhaps a couple of miles up, and their only role was to provide shepherds and goatherders with a rough calendar so they could make their seasonal migrations. Not very imaginative. Then I quoted Arthur C. Clarke at her: “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we CAN imagine.” I don’t think she got it, and we essentially just agreed to disagree.

I began to understand how little we really know back in the seventh grade, when our science teacher gave us a quiz. You had to answer true or false to ten statements, which included “The solar system has nine planets and 31 moons” or “Sol is the only star that has planets” or “Earth is the only planet with life.” All ten reflected the state of scientific knowledge in 1963—and all ten were false. Two of the three examples have been definitely proven false, and the other one has no correct answer. No answer means not true. I scored 100%–the only student to do so, and the teacher was annoyed, surmising—correctly, as it happened—that someone had warned me what the answers he wanted were. A friend from an earlier class had given me a heads’ up. I wonder what that teacher would think if he knew that his irritation (I didn’t get punished) would contribute to a lesson I would remember clearly 60 years later. Isn’t that the sort of thing good teachers dream of accomplishing?

That same teacher taught us that light behaved both like a wave and a particle which in its own right was a challenging concept to grasp. He spared us the mind-blowing punchline which is that light behaves like a particle or a wave depending on if anyone is watching it or not. Yes, one of the fundamental properties of the universe exhibits physical characteristics like those found in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

The latest scientific theory offered to explain this is called quantum nonlocality, which is a notion that a photon can be both a wave and a particle because it’s in two places at once, ‘each’ having the one set of characteristics. Yeah, in this case ‘each’ has to be in scare quotes. It’s a bifurcation of reality that occurs in quantum physics that goes by the name of ‘entanglement.’ A fellow named John Bell discovered that if you produce a pair of photons with the same spin, and you reverse the spin on one, the spin on the other also reverses. How did he do this? Well, that part’s simple. He just performed spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), and polarization (analogous to spin) rotators are implemented by waveplates. Nothing you couldn’t do with a compass and a blunt pencil. And no, your guess is as good as mine. But he proved it happens. One paired photon replicates the spin of the other photon, no matter how far apart they are. Even more disturbingly, the reaction of the twin appears to be instantaneous, which means faster than the speed of light.

I would love to go back in time to visit that science teacher, show him the present state of scientific understanding, and have him devise a new list of T/F statements. I doubt it would much resemble that old 1963 list. For instance, the notion of dark matter existed back then, but the evidence that the universe couldn’t behave in the way it does, or even exist other than as a unvarying field of hydrogen atoms, didn’t happen yet. Most matter in the universe is matter we cannot detect. And yes, it had to precede the formation of regular matter.

The latest intellectual outrage perpetrated upon us poor fools is the concept of quantum energy teleportation. The notion was first proposed in 2008 by Masahiro Hotta, a theoretical physicist at Tohoku University in Japan. He was trying to prove that there was no such thing as quantum energy teleportation, and wound up concluding that his experiments showed that yes, it was possible at the quantum level. The idea didn’t make any waves (or particles) since it suggested the transfer, or worse, creation of energy out of a vacuum. ‘Money for nothing and your chicks for free” as the old Dire Straits song says. It was filed alongside perpetual motion machines and aether, and largely ignored.

But, according to this month’s Quanta magazine, Hotta has been vindicated. The article states, “Now in the past year, researchers have teleported energy across microscopic distances in two separate quantum devices, vindicating Hotta’s theory. The research leaves little room for doubt that energy teleportation is a genuine quantum phenomenon.”

It ties in to the theory of dark energy, the notion that there is some sort of activity in a vacuum (and remember, your atoms are quite apart from one another and you are, in fact, 99.999% vacuum) that lies outside the universe of mass and energy.

Now, if my friend knew anything of the mysteries of the quantum universe, or even knew OF it, she could make a better case for the universe being guided or at least planned in some way. There’s one notion, a totally unscientific one since by its nature defies falsification. Superdeterminism. Paired photons don’t reverse spin by communicating, but because it was determined at the beginning of the universe that both would reverse spin at that very instant. It’s something that would appeal to the fundamentalist mind. But fundamentalism doesn’t leave much room for imagination—real imagination, and not the sort of imagining that translates to “why don’t you believe like I do?”

Still, my answer would have been the same. “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we CAN imagine.” And THAT requires imagination!

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