In article <474fd85e$1@news.povray.org>, tim### [at] comcastnet says...
> >I suggest you buy a clue before attributing every silly off hand comment
> >by me any anyone like me as literal truth, that you get a clue who you
> >*are* defending by proxy, in suggesting that we are the would be Nazis,
> >who want concentration camps and to literally kill people.
> 
> It's simple crowd psychology, enough angry rhetoric and scapegoating
> by a few and soon the crowd will do what the few would not.
> 
> Any good insult has at its heart a small grain of truth. So if I've manag
ed
> to touch a nerve then perhaps you should wonder what that truth is. 
> 
Sometimes an insult is simply so common that you can't allow it to 
stand. Its almost a running joke that when ever some right wing lunatic 
wants to talk about how bad people that are not like them are, they trot 
out atheists and Hitler as an example, and insist we would do the same 
BS thing he did, if given the change. Mind you, part of the fracking 
problem **is** group psychology, but as a group secular people, non-
believers and atheists are often described, even among their own, using 
the term, "Herding cats." Believers actually *want* to be considered 
sheep though. Which group do you think is more likely to react violently 
as a group? Keeping in mind that nearly every poll in the US says that 
like 90% of people think the Bible is to some degree fact, that the 
Christian God is the true God, etc., 60% of them think Christ really was 
some resurrected version of God, and that only 42% say they agree with 
evolution, never mind the fact that 50% of **them** insist that God was 
somehow involved with it.

We have the second worst score world wide for science, the highest 
percentage of religious nuts, outside the Middle East, and most of us 
believe stuff that even the Catholic church is willing to admit (and 
they started the whole mess) is total bullshit. Worse, the nuts actually 
think that making us less scientific, more religious driven and more 
nuts will *solve* the social problems, economic wobbles and failure as a 
nation to show basic science literacy. We have become a nation full of 
ignorant people, who value blind faith and feel good beliefs over 
evidence and reason, at least in the current generation. The next 
generation, even among the evangelicals, smell something foul in the 
air, but they still think they can keep the irrational idiocies they 
believe in, which are not even based on a sane reading of their own 
Bible, and somehow *fix* the stuff they innately sense is drastically 
wrong with the situation. The nuts know this, and what are they doing? 
The same thing Hitler did. Pushing right wing nuts into the USO to 
entertain the troops, trying to throw out religions from our armed 
forces they don't like, and using contacts with the crazies "in" the 
military to not just replace chaplains with ones that think that only 
*one* kind of service should be allowed, but opening fundamentalist 
outreach programs on military bases. Some of them have **4** such 
organizations on base, all of them with ties to the same fundie out 
reach groups.

It hardly matters if, when push comes to shove, most people don't want 
them in power. If they manage to corrupt the people that have the guns 
***and*** elect some nut like Huckabee to the presidency on top of it, 
by playing to the delusions and paranoia of the majority, they will make 
sure everyone that isn't the right religion, or doesn't keep their mouth 
shut, is put into camps, imprisoned, or just disappeared. They already 
manage to convince *some* people when they talk about removing books 
with religious content, like Golden Compass (to uphold the separation of 
church and state, nudge, nudge), while somehow making all sorts of silly 
justifications why *their* books, scripture, etc., don't count. They 
basically own the FCC, since most anyone that cared about running the 
place properly quit after Bush appointed the fool in charge of it now. 
Why stop at a list of words you can't say? Why not a list of subjects 
that are "dangerous to the well being of society or the stability of the 
country"?

Two years ago, I wouldn't have been this paranoid. Today... Sorry, but 
these people just keep getting more and more nuts, the country becomes 
more and more absurd from the viewpoint of 99% of the rest of Western 
civilization, and a lot of the people in the East too, including, 
ironically, China at this point in many ways, and while I have hope for 
the next generation who all pretty much think we are trying to white 
water raft through a sewer at this point and we better hope we don't 
light any matches when we hit a gas pocket, the current generation in 
control is as likely to side **with** some charismatic leader that makes 
a good excuse for purging the nation of dangerous people, than they are 
to appose them, especially if the nut saying it has 100% complete 
control over a military that has received, as part of its military 
training, the dogma that only Christians qualify as citizens, the 
religious right is 100% right about everything, and that its their duty 
to defend the constitution against infidels.

As the ancient Chinese curse says, "May you live in interesting times." 
I just want to live through them, and I am not going to be apologetic 
about, unjustifiably tolerant of, or shy about fighting the good fight 
against ideas or ideologies that claim one thing, but either fail to 
deliver, or does the opposite, or the people that defend such a thing.

As to how group behavior might lead "us" to doing bad things... True, 
save that the groups isn't generally making such statements at all. I am 
hardly an expert spokesman, I don't have vast skills as a statesman, and 
I do **often** choice phrases or ideas intended to convey my irritation, 
which has nothing to do with my own desires, and everything to do with 
just pointing out how pissed off I am. That is why, in public, I let the 
people that are good at this stuff make the statements. They are *far* 
better at it. And some, like Greta Christina:

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/

do so with a profound grace and choice of words that often leaves me 
absolutely astounded. And that is without the fact that she often talks 
about some subjects, like what is acceptable erotically, which are also 
things I either have personal pet peeves about, vis a vi my dislike of 
the common rules people "claim" to abide by, but often secretly ignore 
(because its just not "appropriate to claim you think they are OK, even 
if you do them in private"... --eye roll--), or agree are **not** 
thought about rationally by people.

And in the case of my particular example, why is it that ***years*** 
after the Kinsey Report was released, probably 80% of the population 
find stuff that 80% of the population "admits" it does/did even then, 
and more like 95% now, still considered, strange, weird, unnatural, 
immoral or sick? I mean WTF? It make no more sense to me than why some 
clown who spends 164 hours a week, not including sleep time, using 
evidence, reason and logic to decide how to do "everything", finds it 
reasonable to spend 4 hours on Sunday listening to some clown tell them 
that they didn't actually make any of those choices themselves, and that 
everything in the world works via magic. Where they asleep the other 164 
hours, so didn't notice that *they* where the ones making the choices, 
and more to the point, that the universe kind of did its thing 
"despite" their wishing that the day would end 2 hours early, so they 
wouldn't have to work the rest of their shift, or other stuff that 
*magic* would presumably allow to happen, instead of the harsh reality 
that **no one** has *ever*, to use one of the most blatant examples, 
never regrown a missing limb, despite all the people claiming to cure 
everything from the common cold to cancer via Sunday services? 
Compartmentalization my butt. Some of these people must leave their 
brains in the car before they walk into a church. lol

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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