Hypocrisy @ MindSay

So I watched the footage from the Republican National Convention.  Well, okay, that's not accurate - I watched the Daily Show's coverage of the RNC.  While a great deal of what John Stewart delivered was funny, the clips of the actual speeches left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

I know why conservatives vote the way they do.  Lincoln said it best - conservatism is simply staying with the old and tried rather than risking the new and untried.  They're afraid of change, they're afraid of a degradation of "values", they're afraid of taxes - quite simply, they're afraid.  That's fine - I"m afraid too.

I'm afraid because I listened to the speeches, and I know that ever ignorant, fearful person in this country is eating up the lies, the hypocrisy, and the self-righteous "better than thou" rhetoric that is spewing out of their mouths every time someone stands up at that podium.  I hear them making excuses for themselves where they condemned others.  I hear them telling us we're not allowed to question Palin on the matters in her life when they have ripped others apart for those same issues.  The smell of bullshit wafting out of Minnesota must have been overwhelming this past week.  Yet people will do what they always do, they'll make excuses for themselves rather than admit they might be wrong.  And heaven forefend anyone get the whole story.

And for the record, if one more person tells me that they vote Republican because they don't want to lose their money, I may beat them.  Seriously.  The people I know bitching to me about this don't make enough to be eligible for the tax breaks Republicans approve.  They are not saving money.  They wouldn't lose it if a liberal came into office because, again, they don't make enough to be affected by the new taxes.  And incidentally, how much did you pay to fill up your car last week?  It infuriates me more when the people telling me this are parents - how do you think your kids' schools get money?  It's certainly not from that bake sale you popped out a couple dozen snickerdoodles for back in April.

I could keep going, but from this point I'm just going to start getting angrier and more insulting.  I really do hate politics.  I hate how it fills me with an impotent rage.  I hate feeling that I don't have a hope of affecting anything, yet I'll go and vote anyway.  Not because I think the system works, but just because I can only hope it starts working at some point.

Let me start this off by saying that I have always been against the death penalty. Are there people who should be put to death for the crimes they have committed against humanity? You bet there are. However, you have to ask yourself if it is worth it kill a few nasty people when there have been cases of innocent people who have been put to death. I don't want to see one innocent person die just to take vengeance out on a few.

This leads to another question. How can you call yourself 100% pro-life yet support the death penalty? And for that matter, how do you support pre-emptive war? Well, the obvious answer is that you can't. To do so would show the highest level of hypocrisy. Your true label should be anti-abortion. I believe that there are very few 100% pro-life people especially when it comes to politicians. The only one I know of is Ron Paul. The death penalty has been the only position that he has changed in his 30 years of public service.

I'm not asking you to change your stances. I mean, I would if I thought it would help. But at least change your label so you won't look like a hypocrite.

            Christians are often criticized for being hypocrites.  How should Christians respond to this criticism?

            We should say, “You’re right.  It’s not good.  We are hypocrites.  I’m a hypocrite, too.  I’m working on it.”

            Jesus told us, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

            Being a Christian, according to this standard that Jesus lays out for us here isn’t difficult—it’s impossible.

            So, what’s the answer? 

            Grace.  Forgiveness.  Love—from God.

            No Christian is perfect.  Yet we’re called to live a perfect life.  It’s an interesting journey.  We’re called to be godly but without legalism, which brings spiritual death. 

We’re called to be godly but without self-righteousness.

We’re called to be godly but without condemning others who aren’t. 

We’re called to be godly and to love others, even our enemies.

Thankfully, the Lord forgives us as we endeavor to obey Him.  We fail all the time. 

            So, yes, Christians are hypocrites.

            And how about you?  Do you think people should steal?

            Ever stolen anything?

            Do you think people should lie?

            Ever told a lie?

            Oops.  Guess there’s enough hypocrisy to go around for everybody.

 

Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.

Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.

Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight – Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of whom viscerally detest Russia?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?

American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.

Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?

The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.

We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost – in Tbilisi.

August 16, 2008

PLease God Smite the one Reading this Right now

or Why I am Atheist

by narodniki


There's always this talk about achieving world peace. It's probably the most abused phrase in the whole of creation. I often wonder why God, in all his wonder and awesomeness did not include this itsy tiny bit in the whole package. Now what we have are people killing people. And as time progressed, so did our creativity in inflicting pain and suffering towards others.

They (the Catholic Church, evangelicals, charismatics, etc)  always say that all of this is just a test for God to see if we truly are deserving of our place in heaven. So he's up there right now, watching all these killings and sufferings and what does he do about it? Nothing. Because the cocksucker wants to find out if we truly are deserving to be with him for all eternity.

This is just plain fucking stupid. If that is true, if God truly exists, then the least that I can say about him is that he is an insolent obnoxious asshole who has a twisted morality. Yep, that's what he is. And I give him the opportunity right now, right at this moment to smite me for all this blasphemy, and for future ones to come.

Personally, I would not even think of getting near a person like him. Talk about omniscience, eh? Knowledge about all the things that have and will happen. Why can't he use that?

And then there's the Bible. Just what the fuck is it all about? I think that the Bible is the filthiest piece of garbage there is. I've read much more enlightening stuff. Crazy religious folks (CRFs) hold on to its words like its giving them an orgasm or something.

Maybe people subscribe to this bullshit because of fear. They think that they do not want to go to hell. They think that being all burned up in eternity forever with Satan in the lake of fire, is something that's really terrible. They don't want God's wrath to descend upon them, they think that damnation really sucks.

Personally, I don't think that's the most terrible thing that can happen. I am a TVaddict and I'm telling you, the stuff that I see on the news everyday is far more horrible than all that damnation stuff.

Children on Africa dying of AIDS and hunger in extreme misery. Young girls, 3, 4, 5, years old being raped by an entire squad of soldiers. And these kids, if they're lucky, are left to live. I once heard of something called a fistula. Children in their early teens get pregnant, and because their vaginas are still too small, it would tear in childbirth and complications would occur, involuntary urination and defecation would result, that is if they survive. And more often, the infant, being squeezed up and all that trauma, would not survive the birth.

And all these stupidities are repeated again and again in the history of mankind. Dumb monkeys, stupid fucks, retarded assholes  that people are, I honestly cannot see any ray of hope.

We're already in hell. We just don't realize it yet.