Who brings you back when you're gone gone gone?

Politics in 2012 Will Be the End of Us All

I'm going to throw you a bone here. I'm going to tell you why Obama won the election.

Scratch that. I'm going to give you every single reason why Brother Romney lost. The list is shorter than you think.

1. Brother Romney sided with the Republican Party against his own beliefs.

Many, perhaps most Mormons are Republicans, because the GOP for a long long time had represented the values that we believe in. As such, Brother Romney believed he had to be the Republican Party nominee in order to have the support of his fellow Mormons.

One of the things I noticed about Brother Romney in the interviews and political rallies and at least one of the debates  is that he never, ever, appeared honest about anything. Sometimes he said things that I thought he believed, but all too often I thought he was singing the song he thought the audience of the moment wanted to hear, and I am certain that was a mistake. Assuming that he is who I assume he is - assuming that I'm not wasting my time because he isn't a real, honest, temple worthy, Mormon with a testimony of Jesus Christ and the Book of Mormon -  being himself would have been better, even if it didn't get him the win.

And then there was Richard Mourdock.

Richard Mourdock said a couple of famously insane things. I'm not actually sure which is worse, because without the first, I wouldn't care at all that he said the second.

•  "To me, the highlight of politics, frankly, is to inflict my opinion on someone else."
•  "I think even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

Brother Romney endorsed that man for office.

Yes, he's a rape apologist, and yes, that's as bad as it gets - unless you think more deeply about the other thing he said. Because he doesn't want to govern you in a legitimate, elected manner. He wants to make you do what he thinks is right like a king or a dictator or [channels Dana Carvey]... hmmmm ... SATAN?

I wrote that like a joke, yes? But I really miss Church Lady, and the concept should mean more to a Mormon than most anyone else, because choice and personal accountability is one of our most basic tenets. In fact, we believe that the third of the host of heaven that was cast out with the Dragon was because the Dragon wanted to make us all do it his way, and Jesus wanted to give us choice and accountability. Brother Romney's campaign endorsed a man who essentially believes the opposite of what we as Mormons believe, because party solidarity above my beliefs, I guess?

And that is why, ladies and gentleman, we have a Democrat  president for four more years - because Brother Romney was not willing to stand his ground on any subject at any time in the last three years.

Literate, basically good people are tired of the stupidity and bald faced evil of the GOP. If you think a Democrat shouldn't hold the highest office in the land, then you need to start, right now, working to increase the sanity count in the Republican party. The Tea Party was a terrible thing. Rush Limbaugh and Victoria Jackson and Fox news and people like Richard Mourdock are not worthy of your time. 

Find a candidate who is.

One more thought, and Mourdock was kind enough to be the one who reminded me of it.

MOURDOCK: I certainly think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view. … If we [win the House, Senate, and White House], bipartisanship means they have to come our way, and if we’re successful in getting the numbers, we’ll work towards that.

This is almost the complete opposite of what this country is about.

 I don't think there is a Democrat in the country who believes that Obamacare as it stands is what we need. It certainly isn't what was proposed. But it is what could be rammed past the Republican party.

The entirety of the Republican party has been like this for as long as I can remember paying attention, and you know what?

This is what's going to destroy us.

It's not that simple

One of the primary concepts I take away from Scott Adam's blog can be most easily pared down to a favorite line from The Princess Bride (movie): You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Very, very little about your life, about your relationships, about physics, any of it, is as simple as you think it is, or as simple as you wish it were. We as humans generally require a bit of simplification in many aspects of our lives, just to get through the day.

The Fun Theory Sequence is an amusing (if long) read. I haven't made it all the way through yet, but one of the things that stuck out to me right away is the following paragraph, part of the introduction.

Fun Theory is also the fully general reply to religious theodicy (attempts to justify why God permits evil). Our present world has flaws even from the standpoint of such eudaimonic considerations as freedom, personal responsibility, and self-reliance. Fun Theory tries to describe the dimensions along which a benevolently designed world can and should be optimized, and our present world is clearly not the result of such optimization - there is room for improvement. Fun Theory also highlights the flaws of any particular religion's perfect afterlife - you wouldn't want to go to their Heaven.

I've heard a lot lately about how dying babies means there is no god, that kind of thing. A benevolent god would never let such things happen. How God's morality must be different than ours if that is the way it works. That kind of thing.

Scott Adams has some pretty solid views on religion. I'm not certain he would approve of this use of the ideas behind his blog. And yet based on all I've learned from Scott, I'm forced to ask: why does everyone think that life, the universe, and everything is so complex, so feature rich, so full of wonder, and yet insist that God, "His Plan" and Heaven must be simple?

I'm not asking you to take my word for anything. But I am asking you to wonder if things mightn't be more complex than anyone has ever suggested to you before.

PTSD

What is this I don't even

http://www.good.is/post/how-violent-sex-helped-ease-my-ptsd/

I don't think I can explain to you why I find this article meaningful. I have not had that kind of trauma.

My brother's death has left me even now more vulnerable emotionally, and I of course have raised higher, thicker walls as a result. I think it is related to that. I'm not sure.

The thing that should not be

I'm of two minds about The Silk Road.

I suspect that "Derrill can't hold his liquor" could be said about cough medicine, so my opinion may not be strongly informed, but I am firmly opposed to the use of narcotics or intoxicants of any kind. I'm pretty sure that the utility of doing so is not worth the relevant consequences. That's the first thing.

The other thing, and the problematic part, is that I'm overjoyed to see people make the internet do things it isn't supposed to do. I don't think The Silk Road is such a great thing in and of itself, but the anti-establishment ideals behind it appeal to me. Further, I'm pleased as punch to learn of Bitcoins, though I suspect I may never use them - the most subversive thing I do is read books on my phone using Google Reader AND Kindle!

Some years back, I read Neuromancer - I read part of it in Asimov's, without really knowing what I was reading, before later reading the book. Since about 1994, maybe 1996, I've believed that Gibson was something of a prophet. He never had the technical side of a lot of it exactly right, but the place in his stories where technology t-bones society is the part that I find more and more accurate.

Bitcoins and this use of Tor are more pieces to the puzzle Gibson presents, and I enjoy watching society's blind, fumbling assembly of it.

-- "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."