Thanks, neocons

Ok, so it's that season once again. We contemplate all that we have to be thankful for and look ahead to a bright future here in the land of the free, right?
Then we..........go shopping! Sooooooo,

Thanks to the neocons and all their bible-banging friends for establishing a brand new training camp in Iraq for international terrorism where one did not exist before. Thanks for helping to foster a whole new generation of distraught and disgusted war veterans, not to mention filling all those invisible caskets with young men and women who will never again have the opportunity to enjoy all the freedoms you are so busy trying to take away. And thanks for doing all that is in your power to destroy what little is left of a healthy environment while you put up the remaining unspoiled land for sale to the lowest corporate bidder. Thanks for your efforts at privatizing not only our public lands, but the public's water as well (you clever little devils, but what about all that free air out there?).

O, and thanks for enriching yourselves with the fruits of our labor, far beyond anything that even vaguely resembles reasonable (actually even beyond Dickensonian!), while the rest of us scrape through the month, paycheck-to-paycheck, or scrape through dumpsters to get a bite to eat. Be sure to enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner while all the little people go about their business, doing whatever all those little people do. And, by the way, thanks for not running us over in your speeding limos or obnoxious SUVs as we attempt to cross the streets without sidewalks or crosswalks, or attempt to share the road with you on our bicycles. Finally, thanks for not taking our first-born sons or raping our daughters on their wedding nights (that's soooo 15th century!) and thanks for allowing us these few holidays to blow off steam and plot your eventual demise.

Fall back

Setting the clocks back to standard time in the U.S. these days seems like an apt metaphor for what the far right is attempting to do with the calendar on your wall. There seems to be this idyllic time in the minds of so many right-wingers when everything was pure and simple, a bed of roses without the messy realities of the human condition. Truth be known, no such time ever existed. Being human, we are all burdened with human failings. Whether such realities are repressed or flat out in your face, they exist none-the-less.

What's most disturbing however, is the far right tendency to try and turn the clock back on knowledge and understanding. The extreme rightwing war against science focused upon most recently by Chris Moody's book The Republican War on Science may be one of the most blatant examples of the kind of reactionary thinking coming out of rightfield. So-called "intelligent design" is, of course, featuredprominentlyy in this mindset. An unquestioning belief in what's written in the bible, even when it flies in the face of strict scientifically proven facts, creates a political atmosphere both surreal and chilling. I guess if Jesus could walk on water, turn it into wine, or bring folks back from the dead, just about anything is possible, right?

Religious zealots (if any are actually reading this, which i strongly doubt) are probably saying something like: "Exactly! Anything's possible with Jesus!" But hey, when i was a kid i thought Mary Poppins rocked! I wanted to fly around the backyard with my father's umbrella. I was a pure and innocent kid, but guess what: that umbrella would not get me off the ground. What we want often to believe, as magical and impossible it may be, so often folds in the face of physics.

In any case, believe what you like. It's a free country, right? (well....right???) Just don't go ramming your beliefs down the throats of your fellow citizens. But that's not the modus operandi of the Bush regime, and certainly not of the bible-bangers trying, and this is noexaggerationn here folks, to turn this nation into a theocracy. If they succeed in this holy crusade we are in deep shit. A new Dark Age will undo all the scientific and social gains of centuries. Your assignment: bring on a new Renaissance.