Day 37: Remedial Education

The Republican wing of our "two-party" system has never been, nor will it ever be, accused of being too smart for their own good. They have however been accused, on various accounts and by various people, of playing the anti-intellectual card when it comes to difficult subjects. The source of their resistance to both science and common sense is often shrouded, but many times comes down to hiding behind religion. Now I, personally, have no problem with religious practice or even the idea of religion, what I do have a problem with is people using it to blindly lead others or to try and take certain parts of it out of context and use it to defend otherwise irrational behavior, or what's known as Evangelical Christianity. So what have these Evangelical Christians gotten wrong? Can't think of an example? Really, not one? How about I help you out just a tad:

• Global Warming: Often they've defended (including Sarah Palin) their blatant lack of responsibility by saying, "Oh well God gave us this land and we're to do whatever we want with it because God will take care of us and it." Aaaaaand here comes the rationalism, what happens when you're wrong? And when you're grandchildren are burdened with an overpopulated, over-harvested, over-polluted planet and you're dead? Where's your God then? Fucking hypocrite.
  
  
• Stem Cell Research: "We cherish the idea of any life, this must be stopped..." Sooo even if the eggs are unfertilized, they can't be used to find potential cures for things like ALS or Multiple Sclerosis? Really? So you're convinced (by what exactly, certainly not science) that the eggs that would be used in these studies would be baby humans? Unbelievable, really? You stupid fuck, do you ever go to make an omelet in the morning and crack an egg only to see a baby chicken fall out into the bowl? No. No you don't, go back to second grade biology class Joel Osteen you piece of shit.
  
  
• Banned Book Lists: "These are books that we consider to be unfit for Christian minds!" the pastors piously declare as they slink off to the rectory to tend to their altar boys. Right so you can somehow decide what is and what isn't fit for the Christian "mind", so...what about all those Gnostic Gospels? Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Thomas, Letters of Justin to Trypho? Those don't belong in the bible? Why? Oh, because they are somewhat contradictory to your brainwashing misogynistic controlling messages? Oh I get it. Okay, well guess what next time I want your opinion on whether or not I can read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird, I'm not coming to you for advice, sound good? Thanks...you hypocritical morally bankrupt piece of shit figurehead.
  
  
• Segregation & Slavery: During the civil rights movement, the Evangelical Christian wing of the church condemned things such as Brown v Board of Education and praised Jim Crow laws...yes, those same freedom loving soccer moms that still live in the gentrified suburbian developments were racist back then too. But I guess in their defense it does warn in the Bible about the Mosiac law warning of intermingling between the Israelites and the Canaanites, so...right so that's good...dear God.
  
  
• Abortion: Now listen I don't advocate abortion as a first choice. I think its a necessary evil, and not evil in them moral "good vs. evil" sense of the word, but evil as in its a dirty deed that the country needs to prevent an even worse outcome. For instance, how is it "Christian" to allow a mother to not have the choice between saving her own life at the expense of her fetus if it comes down to it? How can these Evangelical Christians justify that? On top of that, I believe it was George Carlin that originally pointed it out, but why do these nut jobs only care about the lives of these kids while their in utero? Why is it that once they're born then they're fucked and out on their own, no longer the problem of the church, and now its survival of the fittest? Hypocrites? You'll notice an ongoing theme.
  
  
• Heliocentric Solar System: Remember when Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for asserting (correctly) that the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of our Solar System? Of course you don't. Do you remember reading about it? No, why would they bring that up in Sunday School? This guy was killed BY THE CHURCH because he spoke out about his studies and what the entire scientific community agreed upon. If only there were some modern day equivalent of this...oh wait...Lesson to be learned here, if science says its true, chances are it is....motherf*cker!
  
  
• Israel: Why do we support this country (which is essentially a terrorist country--by our vague definition of it)? Ohh...right because the "holy" lands are there, oh I see it. So even if our support for this country is jeopardizing our ability to interact with the more relevant parts of the world (resource-wise), Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan/Syria/etc...Wouldn't the United States be much better off if we decided NOT to stay in bed with Israel? I have yet to see the benefits part of this "friends with benefits" relationship.
  
  
• The Rapture: Dumb. Don't even start. Really? Is this the best you've really got? You really think that one morning you're going, my bad, I'm going to wake up and all of the fanatical Evangelical Christians are going to disappear into Heaven leaving the rest of us here to witness the Apocalypse? Really...you probably also think that Genesis is a biography, stupid cock. Use some goddamn common sense you piece of shite.
  
  
• 6000 Year Old Earth: I can't possibly even stoop to the utter fucking idiocracy it would take one to honestly believe that this and what it entails is true. This means that Evangelical Christians believe that The Flintstones was a FUCKING DOCUMENTARY. Oh, please please please move to the wilderness of Alaska and steer clear of civilized society.

So where was I? Oh yeah, so here we are in our wonderful dichotomous two-party system where no matter what one party does, its the absolute worst thing in the world to the other party. Well the topic de jour is Health Care. Regardless of where you stand on how to deal with the issue there's no way you can honestly admit that there are no problems with the system as is. For instance, I have "good" insurance, my girlfriend--ahem, fiance--is fully covered under this plan. Two years ago she had to go to the emergency room for an appendectomy. I figure, no big deal, we've got insurance, bing bang boom...we're golden. She ended up staying in recovery for three days due to infection, but again no big deal, we've got insurance baby!, so we leave and go on with our lives. A few months later, we get THE BILL. Not only did the insurance not cover anesthetic, it didn't cover a slew of other things as well. Needless to say, even with our "great" insurance we had to take out a loan just to pay for medical bills, AND WE'RE INSURED! Imagine if we weren't....I can tell you for sure I wouldn't be sitting here typing this right now. Why not you ask? Well because I'd have to find another fucking job on top of the one I already have just to pay for a simple operation, that's why.

That's not the point I was trying to make though, that was just an illustration of my prolific use of CAPS LOCK, and that I do have a dog in this fight (its been long enough since Michael Vick to use that now right?). One of the bigger talking points that the Republican party is currently employing to knock down the Senate Health Care Bill (THERE IS NO OBAMA PLAN STOP QUOTING THAT), is that there are too many pages in it. Well that's interesting, too many pages, well since this is an important piece of legislation I would imagine it would be a few hundred pages, I mean its "in theory" a fairly transformative program that would cover all but 3% of Americans (or so they say). Anyway, so the big gripe is that its far too long to read; in fact, they're telling people that it's "longer than War and Peace". Well I went ahead and looked into this, and here are my findings:

The current senate health care bill, as is, sits at 209 pages (single spaced)...209...209 fucking pages?! What the fuck...so if it's longer than War and Peace why don't people read War and Peace? Oh....because that's a LIE, weird. War and Peace is 1,284 pages (similar sized font). Oh....so you mean Republicans are blatantly lying? Well, I thought they were the party of esteemed values and principles....oh, not anymore? That's right, now they're the party of exclusion and corporate welfare, its only okay if the banks get it--right?

But Scott, you might say, clearly this is some type of trickery of margins or font size or something along those lines, there has to be a reason Joe Barton (R-etard, TX) would say something like that right? Well lets look at a word count, shall we?:

• Senate Health Care Bill: 318,512 words
• War and Peace: 660,000 words
  

What! War and Peace is more than twice the length, no matter which convoluted way you could ever possibly come up with binding the two respective things! Why Joe Barton, it's like you said these things to purposefully deceive people, well know that doesn't sound very American, does it? Maybe its just that Joe Barton isn't very good at reading, and we all know its very hard, so let's do a little more comparative analysis....shall we?

• Bush Education's Act (No Child Left Behind): An ironic 280,000 words
• Atlas Shrugged (the Republican Bible): 645,000 words
• The Harry Potter Series (3rd grade reading level): 1,090,735 words
• The Bible (King James Version): 788,280

Now get the fuck out, so The Bible and the Republican Bible are both AT LEAST twice as long as the Senate Health Care Bill. Don't you find it strange, that these Republican senators (who we all know have fully read the Bible and presumably Ayn Rand's sacred text on the glory of the Free Market in action) are complaining about the length of something that's barely longer than the two of the seven Harry Potter books their nine year old daughters are reading?

Moral of the story: Don't believe the hyperbolic claims that this piece of legislation is far too complicated for the average person (let alone an elected government official) to understand. Call your local Senators and tell them that simply claiming this is too long to read or having a Senate page read it and process the Cliff Notes is not legislating, it's just laziness. Merry Fucking Thanksgiving.