Facing the horror.

So anyway, when you lay the whole picture out for people, they react to it in any number of interesting ways....

....there is of course, attack/undermine the messenger, and that's the most boring and predictable, and to me is a white flag of surrender, because it doesn't prove any of what I've pointed out wrong, or fix the problems I've pointed out.
To me it reads as denial from fear, and fills me with pity.
But a bored irritated pity. Not worth conversing with those people.

Then you get your Richard Morgans, who run sucking their thumb back to the safe security blanket of their old illusions.
Which is saddening by itself.
But infuriating if a David Robertson type is leeching on that misery, and really showed me the stakes of the whole mess, and gave me resolve.

Then you get those who've already long ago seen the horror, and have made, to my mind, bad decisions about the whole thing.

Of course, there's the pre-emptive retreat into religious superstition, and if all it did was cradle people, I'd be saddened, but I might leave it alone, but the way they're all constructed, the bullshit always comes along with it, because they were written by the L. Ron Hubbards and Joseph Smiths of their day.
And those fuckers only gave a fuck about themselves.

And that leads right to the next stripe, that decide the world is shit, so why not look out for number one, and cash in; and these poor gullible saps are going to be sheep for someone, so why not be the one taking their money.

And that's how you get your Joseph Smiths, and L. Ron Hubbards.

And then you get the subset of that group, who while they do what they do, think they're doing you a big fucking favor.
These are typically also political animals, and it's where your Leo Strausses, and Dick Chenys come from.
They think they're "playing in the big leagues", and that they're big fucking heroes no matter how much blood, guts, brains, and eyeballs they get on their hands, but it's bullshit, and their crashing failure exposes it.

Then you get the subset of that group, who propagandise for the world of bullshit, and try to get you to love it, and like the Strausses/Chenys, think that's a big fucking favor.

Of course, you have to manage never to think too hard, or it falls apart.
Like religion.

So...critical thinking becomes evil in their little world that they've made for ya.

And I was almost persuaded for awhile, that maybe, just maybe, too much skeptical inquiry in the tender spots might break the machine, and turn everyone's little lives upside down, and chain react a blast wave of horror.
And a lot of authority figures and intellectuals have worried about that.
But, again, their failure exposes the bullshit.

Because if humanity really is in that bad of a way, and really is teetering on that fragile of a house of cards, all it takes is the fuckup of the self-apointed minority eletes just once in the right way to bring it all crashing down, and such a thing would be inevitable.

Well, IMO, it's happened, and we're all still here alive and breathing.
So, I'm plowing ahead with my little lecture series.

Next group of folks, is those who think they're doing you a favor, and also sincerely buy into what they're selling.
That's where you get your nicer more liberal clergy-folk.
But, sweet and well intended as they are, they sell a defective product, and the home office knows it.

The authors of the old Abrahamic faiths, are a strange mix of that type, the Strauss type, and the Hubbard type.
People didn't know as much back in those days, so it all kind of blended together.

But that the Bible was binded by pure politics at Nicea, means it all cancels out into Hubbard/Strauss types, because what went in suited their agenda, and has ever since.

Then there's the really disturbing type, the egomaniac who poses as the sweet/caring type, and that's where you get your David Robertsons.
The clergy is loaded with these guys.
It's very hard to tell if they buy their own bullshit, and think they're doing someone a favor, or know they're assholes, and never drop the act, but either way, their behavior makes it not matter so much.
They're just unpleasant.

Then you get those of the Strauss mentality, but are average shlubs who think they're part of the big club somehow.
I think they must've bought the whole chicken/Colonel deal.
This is where you get your cable news pundits, and just plain message board douchebags.

These folks are the ones that almost had me bullshitted to the "bullshit makes the crops grow", mindset, but, clearly it didn't take, and here we are.

And these are the types who in a pitched and heated debate, will go for attack/undermine/obfuscate.

Boring.

Ah, then we get to the group of people, who, seeing the horror, become bitter, and cynical, and consciously decide to become part of the horror.
There's no illusions at all with this type like the Strauss type, they're just straight ahead sociopaths.
These are the ones that the religious apologists try to tell you all atheists are, or will somehow become.
But, when you look at the world, it's typically these fucking business and government assholes.
And the powerless ones of that stripe, again, are message board assholes.

Then, of course there's the subset of those types, who had no cynicism or bitterness about it, and took gleefully to the evil.

And they're virtually indistinguishable from the former type, because of the masks they wear, but you can decode it from their actions, and their bullshit.

I struggle over sometimes whether G. Gordon Liddy and those like him are the former or the latter, but at the end of the day, you've gotta go "fuck it, he's an asshole", and move on.

But you see, all of those really break down to just two groups, the criminal and the victim.

And there are starry-eyed idealists like myself, who rebel against the whole twisted abuse relationship.

But, a lot of us get bitter and frustrated with the whole thing.

Happened to Mark Twain, happened to Edgar Allen Poe, happened to George Carlin (blessed be his name).

Happens a lot.
And it's really depressing when one of us gets so cynical and bitter they join the horror.

That shit really gives me resolve.

Frustration, or identity death?
I'll take the former.

Anyway, that's the whole humanity package.

And that's the full scope of the mess.

And it's not new information, Twain knew it, Tom Paine knew it, a lot of great minds knew it.

And they warned us, and tried to show us a better way, and people don't fucking want it.

And I get discouraged, but...things HAVE changed, it's not indestructible.
Slavery is gone, the older religions are dead, tyrannies have fallen, the world changes, and will change.
We don't have to put up with this shit forever.

And that's what started me off on this little rant series.

But it started further back.
Everything in all these rants exploded simultaneously inside my mind after 9/11.
It was like that scene in ST:TMP when Spock mindmelded with V'Ger.
But, it wasn't an epiphany, because like that scene, it was painful, and scared the shit out of me.
The whole damned puzzle just popped apart all at once.

And I didn't see how to talk about it without getting destroyed, so that scared me too.

So I wanted it not to be true, and tried to crawl back to my illusions, and stuck with Deism, and tried to swallow the American-okey-doke, and dabbled with Randism, and sat on my doubts.

But, in the background, I was asking probing questions, testing people, harder than I should have probably, I caused a lot of upset, but I was trying to ring out of someone "give me a reason to believe this shit!! Give it to me!! GIVE IT TO ME!! YOU'RE HIDING IT!!! YOU ACT LIKE YOU KNOW SOMETHING SECRET!!! GIVE IT TO ME!!!!!".

Well, I gave it enough years, and did my own research, there was nothing.

There is nothing.

This is all there is.

These people that act like they know some "big secret", that gives them power, and they're all smug and smarmy about it?
Nothing there.
All gas.

And the "big secret", they think they know?
It's the "big plan".
And it's bullshit.
It's just the whole Strauss thing.
The whole "their puny little minds can't handle what we boys 'in the big leagues', know, so we'll make the world so they can have their tiny little lives", deal.

And then of course, the losers who think they're in that club.

Well, what do the boys "in the big leagues", know?
Unless it involves aliens, it's just that it's all fake.
But that's no big fucking secret.
Like I said above, all these great thinkers knew it.
The knowledge is out there.
Pretty unimpressive 'conspiracy', if it's all out there.

But let's say they're right, and the "big plan", does us all a favor.

Why am I still alive?

It's bullshit.

I've shown why.

So, fuck it, I had to lay it all out there.
That's my way of facing down the horror.

It's been a big fucking relief to do so.

Feeling pretty damned great.
Hope you do too.

So, I'm full circle back to that 9/11 mind-explosion moment, and I've unloaded it, I'm unburdoned, and now we move on.