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war profiteering corporate news monopoly barf bags. (Fold them into a cone.) THEY'RE devolving. WE'RE not. But they are trying to convince us that we are. That's clear.
Evolution is adaptation, and it does not necessarily result in the most elegant-looking solutions. Witness the platypus and the hyena.
Maybe some of the warped, ugly wingers--the more sincere among them--are some kind of adaptation to horrible Corporate Rule. They passionately seize upon ol' time religion, as if to say, "I'm important! I have a soul! God loves me!" Cuz the Corporate Rulers don't give a fuck about anything. They're just slashing and burning now, like Genghis Khan marauders. Some people are scared, and shrink into their clam shells, where things are simple. Nutrients in, nutrients out.
The notion that evolution moves UP is something of a humanoid prejudice. It does seem to move toward the organized and the complicated, though. But if something big comes along--moon-sized meteor, nuclear war, whatever--that whole development could be wiped out in days, weeks. No time to adapt. And when you think of what Corporate Rule has done to our society, and to our environment, in the space of 100 years, maybe we're having an adaptation problem. Like me--a writer--who loved my old manual typewriter for a long time, and refused to go electric. And guess what, manual typewriters are a lot better for your arms, wrists and hands than easy-touch electric typewriters and MUCH TOO easy-touch computer keyboards. But the Corporate Rulers forced change upon us, to make yet more profit--and soon you couldn't get parts for a manual typewriter and fixers didn't know how to fix them any more.
Now then, I said "something of a humanoid prejudice." I have long pondered the development of human consciousness. Upshot: We're here to appreciate it all. Nature got bored with endless copulation and one thing eating another, and decided to gaze at Her astonishment handiwork and admire. Thus, us. We look. We marvel. We wonder. Out of the materials of mammalian development, alimentary canals, dung and brain cells, she made That Which Thinks About It All. No, I take that back. The thinking part was survival--smart people hunt and gather communally, watch each other do things, share ideas about tools, watch each other's backs, etc. But what about the part that doesn't think, doesn't scheme, doesn't wonder where its next meal is coming from, doesn't mess around with rocks and bones, but just sits back and becomes That Which Appreciates It All.
The great puzzle of evolution, in my book. It's where the sincere Intelligent Design folks are coming from. Not the assholes who are into torture, mass murder and thievery. But thoughtful people who wonder why we have brains. Why do we think of God? What's the use of it? Bonding? Maybe. But it seems to be a lot more than that. Amazingly adaptable brains. Amazingly, endlessly creative. Reaching out to the stars, and into the depths of the sea, where creatures reside more bizarre than anything science fiction has ever imagined. Doing it just for the hell of it. Looking. Discovering. Wondering.
And why is nearly everything in the cosmos formed into spheres and swirls? Why do things cling to things, and make spheres, and big swirling whirligigs? Huh?
That kind of thinking. E = MC squared thinking. And "A Midsummer Night's Dream" thinking.
Anyway, we're still here. We haven't devolved. There have been assholes throughout the millenia. Look at Caligula. Look at Pope Innocent III. Look at Saint Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria (top asshole of the 5th Century AD). There is a rhythm to human progress, with ups and downs. Take South America, for instance. They're DISCOVERING democracy, just as we're LOSING it. It's a big world out there. Lots going on. The U.S. has built a strong, progressive, middle class society to a considerable degree on the backs of others--exploited peoples and their resources--and also on the plentifulness of natural resources here--such as forests--that we have obliviously destroyed in our march west. And oil, of course, now running out--precipitating the great corporate oil war, on our dime, and at our risk, and using us for cannon fodder.
So maybe what's happening is not devolution, but something else--a somewhat deserved, and, probably ecologically needed, decay, pushed hard by the devious greedbags and heartless democracy-killers in the White House. But, you know, it seems sometimes as if people like Cheney and Rumsfeld are deliberately insulting us. I mean, we're not that stupid. We're powerless at the moment--and have lost our right to vote, to their dark electronic voting designs--but we're still, on the whole, an astonishingly progressive, and peace-loving, justice-loving people. All of the opinion polls--corporate and independent, issue polls and approval polls--over the last several years show this overwhelmingly. The 24/7 fascist propaganda that gets strewn at us relentlessly is NOT WORKING. We're not buying it!
We do have to change, though--or there won't be any planet to evolve upon. We have to seize back our power as a people and convert the whole thing to alternative energy IMMEDIATELY.
One of the other bad things that the war profiteering corporate news monopolies do to us (of many bad things) is to get us to dwell too much on these nutcase wingers, these poorly adapting people who somehow combine "love thine enemy" with killing Arabs. And who hate science. (Jeez, *I* hate science sometimes. Nuke weapons, bio weapons, depleted uranium munitions, GMOs, etc., etc.) The billionaire fascists who are running our country find it convenient to give these people a BIG TRUMPET, to make this minority seem like a majority. But it really is a minority, and will be found to be, soon enough. (--just like the Cromwellians, artificial puritans grafting themselves upon a society that is much, much more interesting than any Cromwellian can see.)
I wouldn't draw many conclusions from this propaganda--this foisting of the rightwing upon us. Give us open, TRANSPARENT elections, in which all the votes are COUNTED in PUBLIC VIEW, and we'll see what's what THEN. Not before.
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