When you have a headache do you rather take a pill, or pray to the Almighty? If you answer, pray to the Almighty, this blog’s for you, Bud.
Let’s travel back to 1925. Darwin's evolution was put on trial by a bunch of creationists. They accused a Tennessee teacher of lecturing that humans descended from a single cell. The idea! Creationists believe they’ve been modeled from play dough by a really big hand, sometime in the year numero uno. The teacher won. Darwin won, and science created the headache pill.
Now, in 2005, the whole shebang is getting a makeover, this time under the headliner, “Intelligent Design vs. Science.”
Sorry, Bud, but it was on the news. I guess you know, you don’t belong to the most informed nation in the industrialized world. Jay Leno even had you on Jaywalking a few times, to make a point that ordinary Americans are a hilariously under-educated bunch. As a subscriber to Darwin-principled science I’d go even further by saying your Intelligent Designer doesn’t seem to have favored you with that which has helped the rest of us evolve as a species: a large brain.
Of course, you may disagree, so let me sucker-punch you: besides my native Dutch I was taught three other languages in public school: French, German, and English. Right off the bat we learned there were more countries than our own. Made it easier for me later to pick up some Chinese and Indonesian—languages, dude, not food. You, on the other hand, still can’t differentiate between "your/you're," "its/it's," “were/where,” “hear/here,” “their/there,” “quit/quite/quiet,” and “to/too.”
And that makes deciphering your blogs hard work, mon!
Now, when we meet, you immediately notice I have “some kind of European” accent even before I have finished my first sentence. Besides not hearing what I said you fail to find The Netherlands on the map. Granted, it’s not a big blob like your country, but since you assert that I’m “from Scandinavia” I at least expect you to point to those countries that unlike The Netherlands make up that geographical group. You can’t. That spot your finger’s on is the Czech Republic. No, no, Turkey ain’t correct either.
During the eighteen years I’ve lived in the U.S. I’ve experienced you repeatedly assume I must be a political, cultural, religious, or economic refugee, someone you graciously shelter and share your “American Dream” with—which, by the way, may be a dream for you, but is a nightmare for many outside of your borders. Dude, I'm no refugee! The Netherlands is so advanced, they have national healthcare, multiple political parties, liberal drug policies you can only dream of, bicycle lanes, and sophisticated systems to keep the ocean out of their back yards.
Meanwhile, knowing squat about other countries, you thumb your nose at an increasingly more sophisticated world in which brown-skinned people, once they’re done stitching your Nikes, wipe their ass with every grade level of private education you so proudly support on your SUV’s Ivy League bumper stickers. If your Harvard can deliver a nitwit to the White House, don’t be surprised if I tell you Indians (no, not native Americans, you dummy) are running universities, businesses, and institutions that rival America’s. Now, they’ve had a “No Child Left Behind” policy for the last hundred years, enforced by every parent who could afford to buy their kids shoes and a schoolbag.
Sorry! I know, right now I have maneuvered you dangerously close to your threshold for criticism, and the little neurons in your brain have begun firing off pre-programmed pulses that translate into “Euro-trash,” “America-hater,” “Socialist,” “Communist,” or... Or what? Running out of labels already? How about “Moron,” “Asshole,” or “Prick?” After all, you feel only you have the right to criticize America, but how? Admit you’re not very creative when it comes to introspection. It’s always easier to just point your finger at your political opponents, be they “Liberals,” or “Conservatives.”
Well, you’re neither liberal, as in “free from bigotry and authoritarian dogmas, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others," nor conservative, as in "moderate, cautious, tending to conserve and preserve the use of natural resources.”
Is it because you basically live under a near-totalitarian regime, a frail and continuously faltering two-party system, in which the ruling 51% makes life miserable for the 49% that lost the last election? Is it because your idea of democracy is to relentlessly sabotage the other side’s political efforts, unrestrained by lies, treason, bribery, and character assassination? Is that why you have been trading in your hard-earned civil liberties lately without nary a stir from a population too preoccupied with reality shows to notice?
Still, you behave as if U.S. branded democracy and freedom are commodities no country can be without. Especially no Muslim theocracy. Yet, you are rapidly turning the U.S. into a Christian theocracy yourself, complete with the similar insane fanatical fundamental neoconservative religious extremists you say we must fight “over there.” Well, I wish you would learn to recognize their vermin counterparts “over here,” like fanatical right wing “religious” leader Pat Robertson in 2005 calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Did anyone protest? I mean, any Christians? Is it because “kicking butt,” has become second nature to you, and you need little incentive to start spreading mayhem that may cost the lives of tens of thousands?
Is it because you have long forgotten how to have a decent and entertaining discussion, now that you’ve been conditioned to see everything in black and white, good and bad, left and right, red and blue? I have watched you quietly disintegrate during conversations, when confronted with facts like, for instance, Henry Ford supporting Hitler and the Nazis. Is it because you don’t know your own facts? That when it comes to ethics, freedom, democracy, and justice, America often behaves like a Mafia Don, more than a dove with an olive branch? Could that begin to explain why you could have helped create the very terrorists that are now defecating on your flag? I’ve tried Bud, but instead of looking for an answer you ask with tearful eyes, “Why does everyone hate us?”
And here lies the rub, dude; most people don’t hate America and Americans. There’s much to admire you for after you wiped out the buffalo and the Injuns, but no one cares for your ignorance of the facts and your standard “fuck you” response. Most people may even think Americans are funny and a little odd with their “best country in the world” syndrome. Dude, many of you have never even crossed state lines, let alone visited Belgium! You know, their neighbors, the French, are crazy about Jerry Lewis, and the Germans will always laugh at Dick und Dumb (Laurel and Hardy). The Dutch? Well sorry, Pal, they think you’re pussies for not being able to keep your backyard dry.
Which brings me to another thing: will you ever look abroad for solutions you desperately need at home? You think you know everything. True, Tommy Ridge taught us that duct tape can protect you from chemical terror attacks, but you couldn’t find any WMD’s after you started a whole war just to locate them. I’ve met you while traveling. You’re usually lost, and that while you’re just trying to find a MacDonald’s so you don’t have to eat the local food. Now that you are in Iraq, have you learned anything about the culture? Ate a falafel? Rented an Iraqi DVD (hint: they’re in the foreign movie section)? Or, explored Iraqi music at your local record store? See, you don’t give a shit! How can you liberate a people you don’t care about? You’re like the boy scout carrying an old lady through traffic, while all she did was wave at her grandchild on the school bus—you know, that smoke-belching pre-WWII yellow scrap you carry kids around in. What’s up with that old shit, dude? Aren’t your kids the future? Don’t they deserve modern buses? That reminds me of your furniture: most U.S. designers seem to get their inspiration from the All In The Family set and create furniture for Archie Bunker’s behind. That’s a long run for the La-Z-Boy, boy.
Maybe that’s the reason why America, while arguably more modern than Cuba, still seems mired in the past. Your roads are in need of repair, lacking sidewalks, street lights, and street signs; old ugly utility poles litter your skyline, your offices and living rooms have fake veneer walls, and your vinyl siding is made to look like wood.
Is that the American Dream you speak of at every opportunity: everything just like the real thing? Fake tits, fake pearls, fake dog testicles, fake orgasms, fake Christians, and now fake science: “Intelligent Design…”
No wonder, you live in a fantasy world in which you’re king; Mattress King; Tire King; Grocery King. And next, Oil King! But hold on buster, you’re an emperor with trillions in debt—you don’t actually own anything and have to borrow from the Saudis and your grandchildren’s social security funds. And yet, calling you on your bullshit is tantamount to treason. Well, I have news for you; your country’s being kept afloat by other nations that haven’t quite collected the last bloody dollar from your Treasury Bonds.
These nations used to be friends, but on your last escapade few came along, because you resorted to lies, name-calling, and French fries renaming. You are no longer welcome where you used to be. You’ve isolated yourself. So then, prepare to live out your days in the gated community that America has become, complete with Mexican guards. You will have to eat your unsigned Kyoto Treaty, choke on your own pollution, your chemical rivers, your acid rain, and the genetically engineered tasteless micro-waved crap you call food. And if you aren’t killing each other first with your gazillion handguns, Uzis, AK-47’s, and other assault guns, you might as well just sit tight and wait until the terminally-pissed-off terrorists get a hold of the WMD’s you yourself have stockpiled within your own borders.
Yep, it’s all working out quite neatly for you, isn’t it, dude?
Could you have done anything differently? Probably not. I’m afraid you religious creeps have become so predictable there’s not an original idea coming out of you anymore, but then you surprise everyone with a rerun of creationism, this time deceptively relabeled “Intelligent Design.”
By now you may have concluded, along with the rest of the world, that “America,” “Intelligent,” and “Design,” are words that don’t go well together in one sentence. Don’t understand me wrong, I do know that you have some smart folks amongst you that in the past have engineered stupendous stuff, like the Chrysler Building, the atomic bomb, and telescopes that can fly past the moon, but these folks are a dying breed, and you know it. They’re the bespectacled intelligentsia; engineers, architects, and scientists—coincidentally, once your ‘A’ students, children every parent would be proud of. In theory they could fix some of the humungous problems you helped create, like global warming, or improve levees that keep out the ocean, but where you are going intellectuals and their stem-cell research are not needed, because from here onward you’re riding the A-Train to Armageddon.
After all your hard thinking, you have concluded that life’s too complex for your burdened brains and that only some super being like, let’s say, the omni-present, yet invisible, terminally-pissed-off and cruel Almighty of the Catholic Circus could have been tinkering with the little cells, veins, fins, flapping wings, leaves, and trees. Oh, suddenly everything in nature fits neatly your “My Pet Goat” story for grownups called “Intelligent Design,” a thinly disguised version of Genesis that contains none of that confusing evolution stuff that first has fish crawling onto land and turn into birds. Oh no! As evangelical realists you put your faith instead in a talkative snake, a babbling bush, and a lone rib that turns into a complex woman. Makes for a great movie. Something Tim Burton could sink his twisted teeth into.
So, gradually it's coming to this: after Pol Pot in Cambodia, Hitler in Nazi Germany, Stalin in Russia, and slews of dictators, madmen, and syphilis-crazed kings before Bush, you are now about to muffle the U.S. intelligentsia, its thinkers, its innovators, engineers, programmers, architects, teachers, chemists, professors, and every scientist you can chase down. Before you ship them off to your concentration camps, to your mental institutions, your gulags, and labor camps, you may offer them to save their hide by denouncing Darwin’s theory of evolution and instead go with the Pope’s and Pat Robertson’s sanctioned legend of a carpenter, a fisherman, and a whore who, if they visited today would be appalled to learn what evil has been and is about to be committed in their name.
Just like the Muslims can’t forget that the Crusaders kicked their cottoned heinies hundreds of years ago, so have the idiot fundamentalist abortion clinic bombing Christians been brooding on kicking the collective ass of intellectuals with an open mind and a critical attitude that makes short work of their ancient cult, its priests’ abusive practices, and detrimental influence on society’s progress.
The idiots among you that are now challenging evolution do that 80 years after the first Monkey Trial and 313 years after the Salem witch hunts, right at a time when we have made enormous progress by applying Darwin’s principles in every aspect of science, be it medicine, biology, biophysics, biochemistry, or anything else with which we try to explain our physical existence. Scientists are about to find a cure for cancer when your prayers could not; and scientist will be the ones to find a cure for AIDS—not your Intelligent Designer you suspect of giving it to us in the first place to punish us for our sins, something He seems to be quite fond of.
Unlike religious fanatics whose narrow world view is based on an old book with cryptic contributions from many writers, for a scientist life is ever evolving, based on forever questioning, and ever inching closer to discovering another truth, revealing itself like layers of an onion being peeled back, promising a cure, a new possibility, a different view. Science is a state of constant wonderment, and much has been accomplished by the curious.
Your Christian demagogues on the other hand may lead you into Bible prayer groups (and into forking over money), but don’t seem to know how to interpret Jesus’ words without creating war upon war, slavery and oppression, discrimination and inequality, and constant suffering wherever they bring the “good news.” Your religious leaders ask you to make sense of a God that can ask you to slaughter your first-born son, but if you actually hear His voice, like Pat Robertson claims he does, you'll find little sympathy even among your fanatical peers if you carry out such an insane request, and you will go to jail, or more likely, a mental institution. That’s because reasonable people have devised laws that protect us from religious fanatics.
Still, the stakes are high, as we edge closer to a totalitarian theocracy with every victory you extreme fundamentalist evangelical Christians score. This time, the deluded "scientists" who defend intelligent design during your new Monkey Trial are well-groomed debaters, but nevertheless they are effectively saying not to bother with research because hey, it’s way too difficult.
Crap!
As species we got as far as we have by applying logic and cleverly bypassing the church’s ominous and stifling influence whenever possible. Otherwise the world would still be flat, the sun would be turning around the world, and we would be riding horse-drawn buggies, wear tall black hats and long beards. Not to mention, many scientists would have died a natural death, rather than burning at the stakes that you always seem to keep preheated. If you want proof of what a theocratic society looks like, look no further than Arab countries and how time has largely stood still there.
Now America’s powerful and political religious zealots want to return to biblical times as well and drag us all along. Soon, Hollywood will burn. Hemlines will drop to below the knee, and de-liberated women can start growing hair again in previously undesirable regions. Men will go on crusades to spread the freedom you’re denying our own women, our own homosexual children, and try to steal the oil that keeps our economy moving. Meanwhile, your greedy eyes are fixed East for the return of the “Son of God.” As if you deceptive, lying, cheating, and murdering bastards of all people would know how to treat someone who makes that claim. Hopefully, you’ll recognize Him before he’s picked up for behaving suspiciously near The Green Zone, sent to Abu Grahib, crucified by the CIA, and raised from the grave for an autopsy.
If you find that scenario even remotely plausible, you’re showing to have a sufficiently large brain after all. Doubt is the way to salvation, Pal, not dogma. Why not debate how our brains’ size may have evolved over supper? If you turn out to be an entertaining and interesting guest it doesn't have to be our last one...
© 2005 Rudolf Helder
Posts
The original headline read: "Chinese Woman Freaks Out In Airport, Gets 600,000 Hits On YouTube"
An innocent headline to many, but I see ignorance rearing its ugly headline. If the woman had been Caucasian, would the headline have read, "Caucasian Woman Freaks Out?"
Now, I know that Chinese is a group, and not a race, but tell that to my Chinese ex-wife...
The woman was not identified as a Chinese national, but as someone looking and sounding Chinese. She could have come from anywhere. So, let's rewrite the headline accordingly:
"A Mongoloid Woman Freaks Out."
Better?
Some anthropologists would argue that there are only three races: Negroid, Caucesoid, and Mongoloid. Thomas Huxley introduced the term "Mongoloid," based on the physical characteristics of Mongolian people, but included American Indians as well as Arctic Native Americans, Laplanders, the Finnish, Eskimos, and Pacific Islanders, but ultimately "Mongoloid" was widely adopted to mainly include the people of South-East Asia, and we recognize Eskimos, American Indians, and Polynesians as different races.
More recently, the Human Genome Project stated unequivocally that "races" do not exist in any biological sense... I'd agree with that more than the tendency to divide people based on their physical appearances. My point is that in the U.S., where race is often mentioned as a distinct feature that typifies the behavior of a group, Caucasians are often excluded from this bias when it comes to the news and their skin color or racial origin is seldom if ever mentioned.
Therefore, "Caucasian Woman Freaks Out," is an unlikely headline in a country where people have grown accustomed to think in racial terms when looking at someone...
Therefore, "Woman Freaks Out," would have sufficed, but I doubt it would have garnered as many YouTube views...