The Weekly Pep Rally: Churches Without a god

Being someone who grew up in the church and who, then, worked in churches for about two decades, I know what church is like. Or, well, I know what church is supposed to be like. Church used to be a place of moral authority, which is what it's supposed to be like, sort of, but, these days, it's become more of a... slot machine. It's a change largely instituted by Boomers through their wholehearted embrace of the prosperity doctrine and the idea they've pushed that church should be FUN! WooHoo!

And I'm not saying necessarily that church shouldn't be fun, but it shouldn't be about being fun. Of course, the whole fun thing is really only about making money.

And I'm also not saying that those morals in the "moral authority" were correct, but, at least, the people who attended paid some semblance of respect to those morals and tried to live lives that matched.

Without going through the history of the decline of the church in the United States, it abandoned any pretense of moral authority with its embrace of Trump (#fakepresident). You can't tell people they shouldn't commit adultery while supporting a man who views adultery as a victory. You can't tell people to "love your neighbor" while supporting a man who abuses his neighbors of other skin tones. You can't tell people to "love God" when you support a man who only loves himself.

I could go on...

Church is no longer about "being good" or "bringing people to Christ" or helping the needy. In fact, "christianity" is no longer about following Jesus at all. "christianity" has become a political position, and church is nothing more than a weekly Right-wing pep rally.

Which, you know, was a very eye-opening thought. It explains why a fairly small minority of the population is able to stay so organized and retain so much power.

Lookit, "the moral majority" Right-wing fundamentalist fascist fuckheads makeup, at best, about 30% of the population, and, yet, they have been able to stay in control of the reins of power for far too long because they are able to stay focused on a small number of issues. It keeps them motivated, and it's why they turn out for all of the elections.

It's like this:
A "friend" of mine from Texas with whom I went to college told me he "literally would have voted for the Devil rather than vote for Clinton." He used abortion as the excuse for his stance (though it sounded more to me like it was about having a woman in charge because "christians" hate women in power). Another "friend" (also from Texas and also from college) quickly echoed the sentiment. Having their votes be about an issue also allowed them to be able to doublethink (look it up if you don't know), "Sure I voted for Trump, but I'm not a Trump supporter."

But let's not go down all of those rabbit trails, as appealing as they are. Or not appealing.
Tempting?
Anyway...

All of that to say that I think those of us on the Left could probably benefit from some kind of similar weekly pep rally that would help us to stay focused on particular issues and motivated about getting out to vote. We could call it Church of the Godless, which would not be substantially different from "christian" churches, but it would be more honest.
But, then, it is rigid fundamentalists who are the ones more prone to hypocrisy. It must hurt to have so many planks in one's eyes.

Writing and the Inspiration Dilemma

There are whole schools of thought about writers and inspiration and waiting for inspiration and when to write and where inspiration comes from and whether it's even necessary. As with most things, there's a spectrum here, with people who believe you should never sit down to write unless you're feeling inspired on one side, and those, on the other side, who believe you should treat writing like a job and sit down and do the work whether you're inspired or not.

Let's take a practical look at this.

But before we go on, let me just say that I have nothing against inspiration. I like it. It's great to be inspired and have lovely (or terrifying) ideas to sit down and play with. But I can almost never sit down to do the writing when I have those ideas. I think most of my ideas these days happen when I'm in the car. You can ask my wife; I make her send me notes when I have ideas and we're not home, so she would probably know best whether that most frequently happens in the car or not. I mean, the car is not the best place to write, not if you want to live through your trip.

I used to know this guy. A "writer." He strongly believed in the waiting-for-inspiration-to-strike-before-doing-any-writing model. He talked about it a lot, actually, about how he would lean back in his chair at his desk and wait for the inspiration to come to him. Wait for the universe to open and flood his head with ideas and words. He'd sit that way for hours. If no inspiration came, he didn't do any writing. As time went on, more and more often, his posts about his writing life were only about how he was never inspired and couldn't find any inspiration and was, as a consequence, never writing.

He's not a writer anymore. I'm not sure he could ever have been called a "writer" since he has no completed work to show for his time as a "writer."

The problem is that I know a lot of people like that, people who quit writing because they relied heavily on being inspired and never did any of the work of writing. It's like this:
Writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
And, well, inspiration doesn't come unless you're doing the work.

So you can probably guess which side of the spectrum I'm on.
The truth is that if you look at successful writers, the writers who make a living from their writing, with few exceptions, these are the people who sit down to do the work of writing whether they're "feeling inspired" or not.

"Writers" who wait for the inspiration to happen first lead lives of not writing and, thus, never have anything to show for being a "writer." Sure, they may have a few pages of this or a few pages of that, but you can't legitimately call yourself a writer if you can't finish anything. You can be a writer without ever publishing anything, but you can't be a writer without work to show for it.

Which brings me to my actual point.

The other day, I heard a bit of an interview with a "voter" about why he hadn't voted in an election. He said it was because none of the candidates had inspired him...
Wait, what?
Yes, he said he didn't vote because he hadn't felt inspired by any of the candidates to get out and vote.

Which I realized is what has bothered me so much about last November's presidential election, people complaining that they didn't like either candidate so they hadn't bothered to vote at all. These people are "voters" in much the same way as a writer waiting for inspiration is a writer, which is to say not at all.

Look, it's not a candidates job to be inspirational. It's not the campaign's job to inspire you. Sure, I get that it can help. Like I said, I have nothing against inspiration. It's great.
But that's not what voting is about!
As a voter, it's your job to make the best decision from the available candidates and to go out and vote!

For example, if you have two candidates and you've rated them on a scale of 1-10 and one of them is a 0 (because Trump didn't even make the scale) and the other is a 2 or, even, a 1, you go out and vote for the better one (not that I thought that Clinton was so low as a 1 or a 2, but I know a lot of people felt that way). You don't wait for a 7 or higher to come along and inspire you before going out and doing your job, because it is your job. If you have two candidates whom you don't like and one of them is an authoritarian fascist asshole, you go out and cost your ballot for the other candidate.

Period.

You want to know how I know? Because France just did just that! FRANCE! Dudes... if France can do it, if France can do the right thing, certainly we here in the United States of goddamn fucking America ought to be able to do the same thing. Ought to be able to.
Because, obviously, we're not capable of that, as the even more recent election of Greg Gianforte kind of demonstrates.
Seriously, what the fuck?
And you call yourselves Americans?
If the people of France can get themselves out to vote for Emmanuel Macron, a guy no one really liked, for the sole purpose of keeping Marine Le Pen out of office, then no one in the United States has any excuse.

When the choice is between the lesser of two evils, you fucking vote for the lesser of two evils.

So all of you people who didn't vote need to own up to your lack of doing your fucking jobs as citizens of the United States and get up off your asses now and register your protest against the fascist asshole "running" the country.
Running it into the ground.

Sorry (not sorry), fuck inspiration. And that goes to you "writers," too.
Do the work.
If you do the work, the inspiration will eventually come.

A Sad Thing

Let's talk philosophy.

But only a little and only bouncing a bit on the surface.

Throughout most of human history, we have operated under this idea of "might makes right." We can talk about the concept from a number of angles, but they all come down to the ability of a person or group to silence his/their opponent(s). Often by death: combat, war, whatever. The stronger person/group then gets to set the rules, the "right."

Frequently, we (as a race) have used "God" as our justification. "I won because God was with me; therefore, I must be right." "God" wouldn't side with a loser, right?

Only, through the lens of history, something previous eras have not had to the extent we have today, we can see that that is, in fact, not true. Or, actually, we can see that "God" certainly wasn't on the side of the winners since they were clearly in the wrong (unless "God" is an immoral capricious bastard). These things we can see even today as the bully beats up the kid in the bathroom and stuffs his face in a toilet. He doesn't have any god on his side; he's just stronger and can, therefore, enforce his injustices on those weaker than himself. Or a group (the Republicans) can make it inordinately difficult for another group (African Americans/minorities) to vote thereby throwing an election in their favor.

And since this is a blog post, I'm not going to run through all of the historical examples of this faulty logic. Might doesn't make you right, but it might just make you an asshole.

As an aside, "might" is the root of racism.
But I digress...

Of course, in our "modern American society," we tend to frown on violence being used as a way to assert might (which is not necessarily so in other parts of the world). Instead, in the US, we tend to use wealth and, well, shouting. Shouting the loudest is our current iteration of beating someone up or challenging someone to a duel. It's this "yelling the loudest" thing I want to focus on.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this "off the cuff" from personal observations and what I already know about psychology (which is a lot considering I have a degree in it). I'm not citing sources, so, if you don't trust what I'm saying, do your own research. (Which is probably a good thing, all things considered.)

One thing that is known about people is that they tend to follow a show of force, which is why bullies tend to gather followers and why gangs attract people. There are too many reasons why to get into that, right now, but you can probably accept that as true. Another thing that is known is that what is true/factual is not of great importance to most people. People want more to follow someone who can "prove" they are right rather than working out what is right on their own. People, unfortunately, don't want to do that much thinking for themselves and most people are perfectly fine with being told what and how to think. Not that they even realize that that is what they are doing.
[The proliferation of fake news, right now, is a good example of people being willing to believe whatever is put in front of them and also an example of the type of people susceptible to it (those on the Right have been shown to be MUCH more susceptible to believing fabricated stories than those on the Left).]

What this comes down to is the person who can yell the loudest being declared the victor even if, maybe especially if, what the person is yelling is false. From experience, people with facts tend to be quieter people. They tend to be the thinkers. And they tend to erroneously believe "the facts will speak for themselves." The facts almost always speak too late or, rather, are listened to too late. Your opinion is only as strong as my fact until your opinion actually runs up against my fact and is crushed by it.

In fact, I think wrong people tend to yell all the more loudly because they know they know they have no facts or truth but want to assert themselves anyway. Having grown up in a household with a father exactly like this (to the point of yelling at me about text books being wrong because he was right because he said so godamnit!), I'm pretty good at recognizing this behavior, and Trump is exactly the same kind of personality.

So, yeah, thanks climate deniers. In four years when the climate is destroyed by Trump and his cronies, you'll know just exactly how strong your opinion was.

The one thing this election proved is that Trump is a blowhard. He relied upon bellowing loudly that he was right without ever having any facts to prove it and, the sad thing is, people swarmed to him. Yes, he proved that he has "might," that he can yell loudly. That he could yell more loudly than Clinton who mostly relied upon statistics and facts and experience, all concrete things that she believed would speak for her.

At this point, you might be saying, "But Clinton won the popular vote," which is true, she did, but she didn't win the EC because Trump cowed so many people into not voting by yelling so loudly about what a horrible person Clinton is. When half of the country doesn't bother to even make a showing, something is horribly wrong.

You know, we like to think we are all enlightened these days. That we are smarter than people of the past. But that is demonstrably not the case. Our technology and progress are not due to "people" but to select individuals who have been building on facts and truths over a long period of time. Quiet people. Thinkers. People who were, in their own times, frequently drowned out by people shouting over them.

"People" are a sad thing. Lemmings. Because Trump is certainly going to lead everyone off the edge of a cliff and, well, most people are not just going to follow willingly but delightfully. The problem is that the people who don't want to follow, people who see Trump for what he is, a bloated sack of flatulence, are going to get dragged off of the edge of the cliff, too. And, well, because it's America, we could actually drag the whole world with us.

[Yes, I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes, right now, and think I'm being "a bit extreme," but I will have another post soon on why this is not extreme but, actually, a clear and present danger.]

Dying of Cancer

I've never talked much about my childhood on here, and I don't particularly care to, but there's a thing here that's important to what I'm going to say, so here's your bit of insight into me.
If you read carefully, that is.

Until I was four years old, I lived with my mother and my grandparents but, even after my mother got married, my grandfather was the primary male role model in my life. He was a large man. Quiet. Great "table muscles," as he called them. I never once heard him raise his voice to anyone, much less his hand, and my mother says she can't remember him ever once saying anything bad about anyone (my grandmother, evidently, was another story; she had the temper). He used to read to me. I'd sit in his lap and smell the engine grease on him and in his clothes (he was a mechanic, but there's more to the story than that) -- that smell was just a part of who he was -- and he would read to me, frequently the same book over and over again. Little Black, a Pony and some book about an old, beat up blue truck. See, I still remember them.

When I was 19, he was diagnosed with cancer; I don't remember what kind. It was one of the fast ones, though, but the doctors told us they'd caught it in time and that he would be okay. They continued to tell us that all through the treatment. "Everything's going well." "He's responding well to the treatment." "He should be going home in no time."

The last time I saw him was a Monday night. We'd gone to visit him at the hospital, which was in another city, but he spent most of our time there asleep. He did grip my arm before I left, a grip that was still powerful despite his weakened condition. Even that night, the doctors were telling us that he was doing "very well" and they expected that he would get to go home soon.

When the phone rang Wednesday morning, I knew what the call was. Part of me died that morning, too.

Cancer can be insidious that way. It doesn't ever really go away; it just hides. That's why we say it's in remission rather than cured. Maybe there will be an actual cure someday but, for now, the best we can do is treat it into submission and hope that we outlast it. The problem many people run into is that they treat it as if it's a curable disease so ignore the symptoms of it coming back because they don't want to confront the issue of still being sick.

Racism has a lot in common with cancer. It's not a curable thing, though many of us have wanted to treat it that way, even going so far as to declare on television that racism is a thing of the past. I understand the allure of believing that, but it's that kind of thinking that allows the cancer to spread. It's a thing that needs constant awareness just to keep it in check, and, as a society, we just haven't been doing that. We can see the results of ignoring the symptoms in the recent rampant tumor growth across the US. Well, not just the US, but I don't think other parts of the world ever thought they had "cured" racism.

At any rate, this past election has in many ways reminded me of my grandfather's cancer, not least in that everyone kept saying, "It's going to be okay. Clinton is going to win, and we're going to treat the racism (and sexism) cancer back into remission." But the cancer won; Trump won; and the emotions of that were very similar to that phone call letting us know that my grandfather had succumbed to the cancer and died. I'm not going as far as to say that the US has succumbed to the cancer, but the cancer, right now, is having its day.

This is no longer the kind of racism that only expresses itself through things like implicit bias and in systemic, institutionalized ways. It has become very explicit and in your face because people who have previously felt social pressure to keep their racism internal have suddenly found new freedom to externalize it. We have moved past implicit bias into explicit hatred and hate crimes.

So let me just be clear in case what I'm saying here hasn't been explicit enough:
Racism (and sexism) is a cancer eating this country up. It has been the great, ongoing conflict we have been dealing with since before the US became the US. Racism was one of the great issues that pushed us into a two party system with Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists (the modern Democrats) on the side of racial equality and Thomas Jefferson (the modern Republicans) and his Democratic Republicans on the side of racial discrimination and slavery. [Jefferson may have written "All men are created equal" but he only meant white men when he wrote that. He even kept his own mixed race children as slaves during his lifetime. That's just sick.]

Those of you who voted for Trump, whether you are feel as if you are racist or not, voted for the cancer. You voted for the cancer to have its day, or its four years as the case may be, and, in that, you are showing that you believe that you are more important than what Trump represents and that, my "friend" is racism. You are saying that you, you white person, deserve better treatment than the people that Trump has stated he intends to persecute, whether they be Muslim, Mexican, or female. You have said, "I know Trump is horrible and intends to do bad things to certain groups of people, but I am more important than those groups of people and I deserve my day at their expense." And, well, that, also, is just sick.

And the best part is...? Trump isn't going to give you your day, either, because you're not rich, and his policies are going to be just as disastrous for you as they will be for everyone else. So, yeah, good job.