Revolution in Iran is nothing new, and there is much speculation that the events happening right now are the prelude to a new Iranian revolution.  Except that, just like elections, most westerners would not envision the concept of revolution the same way the Iranians might.  The 1979 revolution, for instance, had the effect of overthrowing a monarchy and installing a theocracy.  Subsequently, the Iranian Constitution changed very little.  Kicking out a sovereign king to hand over power to a sovereign priest does not seem particularly revolutionary, and I think many people in the west, in trying to generate feelings of solidarity for the current protestors, are imposing a western view of democracy onto a country that has, by and large, openly rejected most of the basic tenets of western democracy.

Which brings me to the protestors themselves.  I must confess I do not understand the level of passion shown in the many videos circulating around the web.  And as much as I don’t want an election (no matter how inadequate it might be) to be stolen outright, I have to say that the level of violence and apparent outrage, to my observation, simply does not match what is actually at stake.  Mousavi has consistently billed himself as a reformist candidate, not a revolutionary one, and his ideas about Iranian government are not all that different from Ahmadinejad’s.  He has promised to “review” laws which discriminate against women, but the structure of the Iranian government is such that all laws in Iran must be approved by the Council of Guardians (half of whom are appointed by the Supreme Leader); so what, exactly, such a “review” could accomplish is unclear.  During the campaign, he was critical of  Ahmadinejad’s generally inflammatory rhetoric and also said that he would try to do something about inflation.  Most of this seems very mundane, and none of it, it seems to me, rises to the level of violence and death happening on the streets of Tehran right now.

In the end, I fear that the reason this event has gotten so much play on the internet is because of the easy lure of violence as news.  There are people now dying in the streets, and there is a disputed election, and for many westerners, that seems to be enough to rally the cry of freedom! (or more accurately, news!).  Except that the people of Iran have consistently shown that they are not interested in what we think of them, and are certainly not interested in being influenced by us.

As I say, I am one of the least qualified people to speak about Iran, and so my own biases about what I think is important or not important may be far from the truth.  I can’t articulate what is going through the mind of the average Iranian right now, and unlike many other people on the web, I wouldn’t try.  But I will speak more freely about something that I do have first-hand experience with – America.  We have suffered through years of unjust invasions, torturing, wiretapping, deregulation, excessive militarization and fiscal irresponsibility – just to name a few – all coming from our own government.  Yet for the most part, we have not taken to the streets the way apparently millions of Iranians have these last few days.  As much as I do not condone violence, I also do not condone apathy.  The Iranians have not been content to sit by and watch their election be decided by unscrupulous leaders, and it’s long past time for Americans to stop allowing the course of our country to be charted by our unscrupulous leaders.

For the sake of clean air and water, healthcare, the poor and the homeless, the unemployed, equal rights for all, education, ending the American empire, reigning in unfettered global capitalism, locking up Wall Street cheats and letting out all the pot smokers, and having a government which actually serves the needs of its citizens, isn’t it beyond time for a revolution here?

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We are, at our core, gossiping animals who like to share and spread information without much thought or care about whether said information is accurate or not. We are, in many ways, a culture of teenagers. We value being the first to spread new information even if it isn’t true rather than being the first to actually figure out if that information is useful or relevant. Those who wish to take the time to consider things in a greater historical and cultural context, and those who wish to actually verify the information, are the uncool kids. They are the nerds, the geeks, the loser ‘intellectuals,’ and by the time they’ve actually figured out what’s erroneous about the latest bit of gossip, the gossipers have long since moved on to the next three topics.

I have never understand either the entertainment value or the news value of discussing the private lives of celebrities and politicians and public figures. But then again, I have never understood the value of such gossip in real life, either. If you take just a moment to really stop and consider that we regularly report on the dating and mating habits of celebrities as if this is news, and that doing so is a multi-million dollar industry, it is very easy to come to the conclusion that our species must inherently be vapid and small-minded. When you think back to how fast information spread in the confines of that nasty social experiment we call high school, and how much of that information was never true to begin with, or how much it became less and less true the more it was passed on by more and more people (ala the telephone game), you might also come to a similar conclusion. I know there are days that I, myself, think it would be the greatest thing in the world to just be able to tune everyone else out, or like Burgess Meredith in that famous Twilight Zone episode, be the last person alive, living in peace and quiet with no fear of having to suffer through any more human violence or vapidity.

In the last couple of weeks, we have had three unrelated yet apparently culturally significant murders in this country: The May 31 killing of George Tiller, the June 1 killing of William Long, and yesterday’s killing of Stephen Johns. I don’t need to go into all the details, as these have been talked about endlessly recently. But then again, that is part of the point I’m making. The bodies are barely cold in these cases, and partisan hacks from both of the corporate parties (and their media flunkies) have been busy placing blame and pointing fingers about the supposed cultural significance of each of these acts of violence. The Tiller killing has inflamed the ongoing abortion debate, the Long killing has been used to try and show (once again) just how ‘liberal’ the media really is, and the Johns killing has been used to show that a government report about right-wing extremism must be true.

And all of this in the course of hours or sometimes even minutes after the events, with people picking their supposed sides and hunkering down into long-entrenched positions for the sake of generating page views.

I’ve been re-reading Helter Skelter recently, and one of things you take away from this book is how much public gossip can interfere with getting at the factual truth of a matter. For instance, Richard Nixon made headlines when he famously declared that he thought Charles Manson was guilty. During his trial, Manson briefly flashed a newspaper with this headline at the jury, and it nearly derailed the entire trial. But in general, leading up to and during the trial there was much media frenzy and speculation about the motives and methods of Manson and his cult ‘family,’ and most of it was completely erroneous. Newspapers reported things that never happened, got crucial details of the killings wrongs, and generally worried more about playing up the sensational aspects of the killings (which were already grizzly enough on their own, thank you) than they were about conveying factual information. And these were just newspapers. And when Manson’s Helter Skelter motive was finally figured out, even the police and some of the other prosecutors didn’t really believe it and didn’t even want to enter it into evidence at the trial; proving that, even when we do get the truth, often times people just don’t even want to think about it.

And similarly, these recent killings all have their odd details and mysteries. Why did James Von Brunn shoot at and kill security guard Stephen Johns first (and last)? Johns was holding the door open for Von Brunn, so clearly Johns did not see that Von Brunn was even armed and had no idea that Von Brunn was a threat. Why didn’t Von Brunn open fire on the crowd in general? When Carlos Bledsoe killed Army recruiter William Long, was it some kind of anti-war political statement? Clearly, the right-wing media thinks so, as they have been the ones to point out that he was a Muslim convert, and therefore must be against the occupation of Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or the US relations with Saudi Arabia. Or, what, exactly? Even the Little Rock police spokesperson said “To be honest, we’re not completely clear on what he was upset about.” Was it a problem with the Army in particular, the American military in general, the US actions in one specific part of the Middle East, or the entire US involvement in the Middle East going back to 1953 Iran?

More importantly, how could we possibly know so quickly?

And then there is the killing of George Tiller. This one, you must surely be saying to yourself, is pretty self-explanatory. Right? This incident allows me to sum up what is true, I believe, about all of these cases. As much as politics may or may not have played a part in these crimes, it is also pretty evident that, just as in the case of Charles Manson, we are talking about people who are obviously not quite right. Whether they are legally insane, or simply mentally unhinged, is currently unknown. But it is clear that something is amiss in the minds of these killers. Whether that can be traced back to any one influence, or maybe even a chemical imbalance, is something that we’ll have to wait and find out.

And that’s really my main point. All of this speculation and politicking regarding these crimes in such a short time span is not only unproductive, it is dangerous. At some point, each of these killers may or may not have a trial, but even if they don’t, there will still need to be a rational investigation so that they can be charged and sentenced accordingly. But even so, we may never really know about their true motives, or what they were really thinking at the moment they committed their crime, or what, if anything, their actions have to do with the larger political ideas we have all been tossing around so casually these last few days.

In the instant we receive new information, we have a choice: we can either speculate and rush to judgment, or we can wait and see what the truth actually turns out to be (if we even ever really know it). All of this instantaneous information can be a good thing, but it requires that we deal with and work on changing a very basic part of our nature, the desire to know now and ask questions later. If Scott Roeder et al turn out to be legally insane or just crazy, either way we will still be left with important long-term issues that transcend these individual acts of violence. And they will not be addressed by partisan stupidity, but only through a long, drawn-out process that involves as much self-reflection as it does objective inquiry.

And for those things, we will need more than an instant.

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As thinking adults, are we supposed to take this not-even-remotely-disguised nostalgic dreck seriously as opinion published in a respected (by some, not me) newspaper of note?

The bailout of GM (and its eventually inevitable demise) does represent the beginning of the end of the road for an era in American life marked by suburban and exurban sprawl and over-reliance upon the unsafe, gas-guzzling, 100+-year-old technology embodied in the automobile. I used to know people who lived in a housing development, but they were lucky enough to live within about two or three blocks of a grocery and video store. And yet, they refused to walk there. And I don’t think they were an exception; I believe they pretty much represented the norm. The myth of the freedom that the automobile supposedly gives you is belied by twice daily traffic jams clogging up every major American road, and it is belied in the actions of the people who are unable to even contemplate transporting themselves two blocks without the aid of a giant motor and a rack-and-pinion steering system. When you no longer have the freedom to contemplate even the simplest tasks without involving your automobile, that is not a state of freedom, that is a state of addictive dependence.

Like many conservative screeds, it’s hard to figure out just what, exactly, O’Rourke is upset about. On the one hand, he rightly points out that people have had to spend too much time in their cars driving ever increasing distances to participate in the most mundane of activities (”The play date was 40 miles from the Chuck E. Cheese”). But instead of embracing the solution to that problem, he denigrates those who propose it (”If we would all just get on our Schwinns or hop a trolley, they said, America could become an archipelago of cozy gulags on the Portland, Ore., model with everyone nestled together in the most sustainably carbon-neutral, diverse and ecologically unimpactful way”).

So, to recap Mr. O’Rourke, people stopped loving their cars because they had to spend too much time in them doing mundane things instead of enjoying the adventure he had when he was a kid and drove around his neighborhood in the 1950s. I guess he doesn’t understand (or simply refuses to admit) that the very people who rely on cars in the suburbs and exurbs don’t live in neighborhoods, they live in housing developments. They drive their kids the 40 miles to a play date because that’s the closest they are to people they actually know. I’ve been to many suburbs and housing developments, and the one thing you don’t see there is people acting like they’re in a neighborhood. But the solution to this problem, which we do in Portland, is building actual neighborhoods. Neighborhoods where people get out of their houses and walk around and talk to each other. The irony of this, given O’Rourke’s anti-Portland ranting, is just too overwhelming.

Finally, there is this phrase: “tax-sucking mass-transit projects.” This is a quaint, predictable, conservative talking point, that public investment in mass transit is somehow more costly than public investment in roads for cars. He and the others who parrot this line really should take a look at American history as well as current American fiscal policy. It was the government who created the highway system, who built all the bridges and roads for cars, and even today the federal government will give nearly limitless tax dollars to a state or city who wants to build a new road, but almost nothing to one who wants to build a streetcar system.

Conservatives these days are ranting about everything: taxes, socialism, abortion, empathy; yes, even the idea of empathy is now rant fodder for these angry white men. This can only mean one thing: they are desperate, they are a dying breed, and just like the American automobile, fewer and fewer people want anything to do with them.

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Oprah is a strange case, a woman whose appeal seems to cross all political and social boundaries, who somehow has gained massive popularity with both rich white women and poor black women.  And Stedman.  My mother, who watches little to no television, religiously tapes Oprah’s show every single day.  I wonder why people like my mother are so compelled to watch her, and I have yet to think of any logical reason.

But I kid Oprah, as she is a billionaire and could probably have me killed if she wanted to.

Many internet vegans are upset and/or surprised that Winfrey, who once went on a 21-day vegan ‘cleanse‘ diet, would now turn around and pimp KFC.  Bob does a nice job of taking on that issue, so go read his piece if you really care to hear all the gory details.

Likewise, many internet skeptics are upset that Winfrey would give former naked model and current anti-vaccine activist Jenny McCarthy her very own TV show.  Skepchick has a nice letter we all can write to our moms about that.

I can only wonder why people are either surprised or upset by these decisions.  Oprah Winfrey is, first and foremost, in the business of making money for herself.  There’s no doubt that KFC paid her some substantial amount of money to jump on their bandwagon, despite her former vegan cleansing and the infamous appearance of Howard Lyman on her show which led to her trouble with the cattle ranchers.  If Oprah was a political activist (not in the Democratic or Republican sense of the word), or if she had ever promoted radically changing one’s worldview on her show, then one could be surprised at her promoting a corporation like KFC.  But since her show is not about changing one’s worldview, but is, in fact, about reinforcing one’s worldview, then there really is no surprise here.

Likewise, the anti-vaccine activism of a former MTV star is a story that has drawn a lot of eyeballs, and Oprah is about nothing more than drawing eyeballs.  As much as people rely on scientific knowledge every single day of their lives, there is an enormous anti-science streak which runs through our society, and people like seeing (what they perceive as) attractive women on TV.  If the opposite were true, and people liked long, boring dissertations about reason and logic presented by ordinary-looking people, Oprah would produce a science discussion show instead.

There are many downsides to market capitalism, one of which is that it handsomely rewards people who bolster our pre-conceptions, fulfill our basest desires and promote our most mindless popular culture.  Anti-authoritarian curmudgeons, like, say, myself, will never be rich or famous.  Those who care more about the factual truth than popular perception will never become billionaires with their own media empires.  If one wants to be where Winfrey is today, then one must act like she acts today – willing to promote whatever is the flavor of the month in order to appeal to as many people as possible right now.  The quarterly balance sheet which rules market capitalism has infected every aspect of our culture, and any stab at long-term thinking (beyond the next day, month or year) is dismissed as idealism, socialism, communism, whatever pejorative can be thought of.  What really matters to us, and what drives our markets and our personal thinking, is whatever is happening right now.

And exploiting this human failing has made Oprah Winfrey a billionaire.

We hold our celebrities in incredibly high esteem in this part of the world.  Some of them may very well be talented actors or musicians, and Oprah, despite the criticism I’ve leveled at her here, is very talented at what she does – self-promotion.  And we reward self-promotion very handsomely.  We are drawn to ego and hubris, and we are drawn to wealth and popularity.

But that doesn’t change the fact that wealth, fame and fortune are not desirable in and of themselves if the pursuit of them makes the world a worse place to live in.

If the pursuit of wealth and popularity helps to promote non-critical thinking, or unhealthy living, or the exploitation of women in magazines or animals in cages, then it is not a good thing to be a billionaire, it is a very, very bad thing.  And Oprah, and all of the kings and queens of self-promotion out there, the ones we so handsomely reward, are not saints to be worshipped, they are devils to be exorcised.

But a good exorcism, like all things, begins at home.  We can’t blame Oprah for wanting to be rich and popular if we are the ones making her rich and popular.  We can’t blame, say, Nancy Pelosi, for behaving the way she did about about torture when there was such a vehement pro-war feeling running through the media and the country in 2002 and 2003.  If she had stood up and tried to tell the truth about torture then, we the people would have castigated her the way we castigated Jimmy Carter for telling us to turn down the heat and put on a sweater.

We can’t blame people for lying to us when we, through fame and fortune, regularly reward such lying and punish, through rejection and scorn, even the tiniest bit of truth-telling.

How does one become rich in our society?  By feeding the general public a steady diet of sugary-sweet half-truths and ego-feeding nonsense about how great we are and how great everything in the world is.  By catering to our every whim and telling us that we can do no wrong.  By telling us that the scary science people want to poison our children.  And by taking money from giant, soul-sucking corporations in exchange for publicity.

That is how it is done, and for that, the blame lies not with the rich and famous, but squarely on the shoulders of those who make them so – us.

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Apple Lawsuit (link 1, link 2)

Song: Telling Lies

You Can’t Handle the Truth

Judge Judy

Song: Margaret the Liar

Comedy Healing

Song: Honesty is a Two-Way Street

A Two-Dimensional Universe

Your Pants are on Fire

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This appears to be a very nuanced moral question, as if one lesser, known immorality is outweighed by some future, unknown greater one.

But it certainly should arouse the suspicions of even the least observant among us that the side of the political spectrum whose bailiwick is usually to peddle an absolute morality on issues such as stem cells, abortion and gay marriage should now find themselves arguing that sometimes morality isn’t absolute, but rather conditional on time, place and need. And it should really raise a few eyebrows to hear them suggest that issues of morality can be weighed using some kind of rational thought process rather than relying upon a sacred dogma handed down from a Higher Power.

This only highlights something we already know, that the function of the right-wing noise machine is to argue whatever they’re told to argue today, and to not worry about how it might contradict something they’ve argued before or will argue again. Their job is not to think, their job is to win arguments, and it’s something they’re very good at.

So, if this question of torture really were a difficult one, and there really were difficulties that did not present an easy resolution, the last people in the world you would turn to for answers would be anyone named Cheney or Hannity.

No, torturing suspected terrorists is not at all a complicated moral quandary. It is very plainly yet another example of putting someone on a lower moral plane than yourself. An Arab suspected of terrorism is a lesser person in this scenario, an Other. Therefore it is decided that they deserve less moral consideration than those in our American tribe. It is tribalism, or it is racism. Call it what you want, it is yet another in a long line of examples in human history of seeing someone else as the Other, and therefore, the lesser.

The argument keeps coming back to whether this specific torture in question was “effective” or not, but that isn’t an issue because the people defending it would still be defending it even if it wasn’t. These people always use the hypothetical future to justify anything they want, from torture of individual prisoners to invasion of entire countries. And so even if it had not produced a single shred of useful information, the torture apologist would keep right on saying, but what if it does? Don’t you want us to do whatever it takes to be safe? Wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry?

So, when torture is “effective,” and prisoners do crack under the pressure and give up useful information, where does that leave us? It leaves us in the position of being torturers. It makes us official state sponsors of terror. Look, we even have the memos to prove it.

The only complicated moral question in this scenario is not about some finger-on-a-nuke plot from 24, it’s about what to do with those responsible for deciding to use torture instead of intelligence. The President and many other people were directly involved in mapping out this horrific policy of acceptable torture, and they should be held accountable. But there were also those on the ground actually carrying out the torture (who were admittedly only following orders), who wasted time and committed deeply immoral acts torturing prisoners in their custody when they could have been out in the world doing some kind of effective intelligence work.

It also raises the specter of a citizenry that apparently has no mechanism for holding anyone in their own government accountable for even its most egregious decisions; a citizenry also who apparently has no way of finding out what their own government is doing until years after the fact. What is our culpability in this matter? If this truly is our government, then some measure of accountability also rests with us when we allow it to do such a horrible thing.

But perhaps most of all, this situation underscores a deep failing of our basic natures, that we still think in reactionary, us-vs-them terms when it comes to our own fears about safety and security.

Meanwhile, many people around the world will continue to hate America, and they will do so whether we torture our prisoners or not. And anyone who has the will can commit some horrific act of terrorism no matter how “effective” our torture techniques are. So, it comes down, as it always does, to a question of who we want to be. And that’s all morality really is, the answer to the question of who you want to be. Do you want to be a torturer, a murderer, a rapist or a terrorist? If the answer is no, then would you want your government to do any of those things in your name?

The right-wing noise machine can try and sell itself as the new arbiter of nuanced morality, but all they are really pushing is fear, which is the main thing they have always done. Unfortunately, fear is a great motivator, and my fear is that we have gotten so caught up in our own vague anxieties that we have sacrificed too much decency and common sense in the process.

In a country where people take to the streets to protest something as mundane as taxes, what does it say about us that we are bending over backwards to justify torture?

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It is painful how much sway anti-factual religious fervor still has over our lives. Why we must even have the discussion about propagating the unscientific dogma of so-called creationism in our biology classrooms escapes me, as does why it still says in god “we” trust on every bit of money I come into contact with. Who is this mysterious “we” my $5.00 bill is talking about? To be more accurate from my point of view, it should read in god “they” trust. But then human culture has never been a great champion of accuracy, so while I may be generally dismayed at these constant tuggings from the religiously-fevered to move in the wrong direction, given even a cursory glance at human history, I am hardly surprised.

Evolution, or evolve, both simply mean change; one a noun, one a verb. Change, both in noun and verb form, is everywhere all around us every day. Those who insist that biological evolution is some sort of secular dogma, intended to wrest us from our traditional family values and turn us all into an anti-religious militia serving a Satanistic state are, to put it mildly, deranged. And they apparently fail to notice that they, themselves, are constantly changing, and that the person who was born a wee baby and the person who dies a gray-haired elder are two different people; one became, changed, evolved, into the other. So to suggest that life does not change over time is to completely misunderstand one’s own physical, physiological, and intellectual self. That the human brain is so very capable of totally misunderstanding itself is, perhaps, one of those quasi-religious mysteries that points to the limit of our scientific knowledge and brings up the deeper questions of our existence. And that is fine, because that is why we have the scientific method in the first place: to answer questions.

The sort of modern, intellectually liberal religious Arab, Jew and Gentile in the western world speaks often of holy mysteries and sacred unknowns and personal doubts; a step in the right direction of religious evolution, to be sure, but those people seem to me, from my atheistic perspective, to be just a few more steps of evolution from coming over to my side. And while I am not a fan of black/white absolutism, I am also not a fan of sticking around in the nebulous middle simply because of cultural or familial fear of difference and personal rejection. Allegiance to culture is anathema to my loner, contrarian being, especially allegiance to culture in the face of unavoidable truth. It was unavoidable for humans to finally admit that the earth was round, that the sun did not orbit us, and that leaches did not cure diseases; unavoidable, and yet acceptance of those truths was culturally impeded every time. This is not to say that everything new is better or right, of course. Many new ideas are just as inane as some of the old ones. New and old are not equivalent to right and wrong, and the discussion about the evolution of biological life as well as the evolution of human thought is not just about new and old, it’s also about right and wrong. Or, to put it in a way less moralistic and more accurate, factual and non-factual.

There are plenty of old ideas I’d desperately love for our culture to hold onto which, on most days, it does not seem to be: decency, honesty, charity, the pursuit of the excellent over the mediocre. And there are many new ideas which come and go, and rightfully so. We have an obsessive way of talking about the newest music, the newest fashion, the newest news story passing around the internet, and just a few months, weeks or sometimes even days later those things which we obsessed about become old news, tossed on the scrap heap of cultural amnesia. See you at the end-of-the-decade retrospective, falling grape lady. Older ideas can be both good or bad, and if we really cared about the truth, we would leave the longevity of an idea, as well as its popularity, out of the equation altogether.

The next step in the evolution of human thought I would like to see is the widespread embrace of doubt not in the service of religion, but in the spirit of getting at the factual truth. Putting aside the larger discussion about whether anything can even be totally known or finally decided, and whether what we perceive as existence is something else entirely, perhaps giving our assumption of knowledge an air of supreme arrogance, if something is factual as far as we can tell given the limits of our knowledge and perception then we know it as much as we can know anything and can act accordingly. But if we are still unsure of something, then instead of filling that gap of knowledge with superstition, religion or dogma, we ought to just let it alone.

Perhaps the greatest leap in human cultural evolution will be the ability to just let the gap sit there and stare back at us until we can fill it with something we know. This is, perhaps, the most difficult thing for the human brain to do, to let true uncertainty linger and perhaps even fester. We love resolution and we love solving a mystery. These loves explain why our most popular TV and movie entertainment is about solving crimes, ending court cases, and couples overcoming their differences and falling in love. Personally, we tend to see the journey (or the process) only as a means to reaching the destination (or the answer). Culturally, we hate uncertainty in our politicians and mock it as a sign of weakness, even if their unwarranted certainty leads us all to a much worse place than if they had simply stood their ground and proudly proclaimed “I don’t have the answer” instead. Our next intellectual leap of evolution has to be the widespread acceptance of honest ignorance in our personal lives and in our politics. Our near-suicidal love of dishonest certainty is one very old idea which also happens to be wrong (both in the moral and intellectual senses), and should be tossed on the scrap heap of cultural amnesia as soon as possible.

The most devout of religious people often perceive a certainty in scientific fact which they feel parallels their own dogma, and so you have the quite ironic tendency for those clinging to the most fervent of religious beliefs to use the argument that science is just another kind of religion, and that no one can really prove evolution much the same say no one can really prove god. To attempt to smear an opponent by saying that they are just like you must either be the greatest sign of unconscious self-loathing there is or it simply indicates the appalling level of desperation on the part of the person doing it. Or perhaps both. But scientific truths are not religious ones, and, despite what creationists say in the media, evolution is taught as a theory in biology classrooms. Students learn what is known about it and they learn what is unknown about it. This is only fair, and intellectually honest, and is the farthest thing from religious dogma there is.

However, god, in the context of religion, is not a theory to be probed, it is a certainty to be memorized. For all of the doubt and skepticism which permeates much of modern religion, two things are never in question: there is a god, and you owe some fealty to it. Perhaps the true nature of that god is in question, and perhaps the nature of the fealty is also up for grabs, but if you were to question those basic precepts, then you really could no longer be even a doubting religious person. You would be perhaps an agnostic, perhaps an atheist, most certainly a skeptic. But if you ever really wondered whether there was some kind of sentient god that had expectations of you, then even setting foot in a temple or mosque or church would have to involve a leap of faith, making moot whatever lingering doubt you may have had on the sidewalk outside.

Despite even their most liberal protestations to the contrary, people do not go to church seeking the truth, they go seeking religion. If Galileo or Darwin or Wallace or Einstein or whomever had merely been seeking religion instead of seeking facts, our world would be a very different place today, indeed. There are those who worry, and rightfully so, about the abuse of science and technology, the potential evil that can be done with some of our new knowledge. And this is the price we pay for freedom and intellect. Vigilance is required to insure that we do not harm ourselves, or allow fascistic cultural control via new technologies and methods. But it is a small price, and no different from our daily struggle with personal ethics. Having the real truth, being able to look at our existence and proclaim “here is what we know” and “here is what we don’t know” and then being able to go about filling the gaps, not with fear and superstition, but with more facts, are all astounding privileges, and ones we cannot take lightly.

Whatever people think god is, it is really just a placeholder for the unknown. The next big step forward we must take as a species is to discard that placeholder, discard creed and canon, and take the journey together not to some religious or utopian ideal resolution, but simply to fill the gaps in our knowledge with whatever truths we find together along the way, before our existence comes to an end and we are subsumed back into the universe which afforded us the amazing opportunity to be alive, aware and curious.

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PETA.org

Animal Dreams

Naked Fur

Naked Showering

Bill-O on PETA

Ingrid Newkirk at Mother Jones

Pretty Women Got it Made

Ingrid Newkirk in the New Yorker

PETA on BK

BK’s ‘Nutrition’ Info

PETA’s KFC ‘Victory’

Jenna Jameson for PETA

Bullshit on PETA

Newsweek on PETA

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Given the history of slavery and institutionalized bigotry in this country, given the plight of black and brown-skinned people all over the planet right now, given the bigotry of the American legal system, given the struggles, beatings and assassinations of civil rights leaders and activists, today is a day to celebrate what can now be called cultural and civic progress on a global level.

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Given the last podcast, especially, I would be very tempted to let the passing of the Bush Presidency go without any comment. Everyone else seems to be very happy about it, though, and many people are chanting the proverbial ding, dong, the witch is dead! everywhere I turn. Except that the next American President will continue our sad adventures in the Middle East for years to come, he and the Congress will continue to funnel trillions of dollars into the Pentagon and the various military contractors, and along the way maybe he’ll try and do something about healthcare. A marked improvement, worthy of celebration and song? More like an infinitesimal step in the right direction.

After eight years of Señor Bush’s occupancy of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., there are, though, important ponderables. Although what I believe are important things to ponder might not be the same as what others have in mind.

Over the last eight years, there has been much personal mockery of President George Walker Bush. It has been said time and again by many Democrats and by many people on the left that President W is a dim-witted dullard, a vacuous nitwit, an idiotic fool who cannot string together a sentence, much less a coherent thought. I, myself, have occasionally enjoyed laughing at our Idiot-in-Chief’s antics and malapropisms. However, this is far too easy, and it serves to distract from what really matters about the Bush Presidency. The problem with him is not that he is dumb, uncurious or incapable of self-reflection. I don’t believe for one second that he is actually a stupid person. The problem with him is that he is truly, painfully American.

Bush has not been so much an individual – a maverick, if you will – as he has been a grand archetype masquerading as one. He is not a fully-formed person, he is rather an amalgam of what many Americans think is the very ideal of personhood: living fully within the daily, non-thinking rituals of family and work life, adamantly embracing all traditions, precepts and cultural authority, and believing with near absolute moralistic certainty that you were put on this planet to help perpetuate those same mores without question. This blind ideal, passed on by familial and cultural indoctrination, actually teaches that self-reflection and curiosity are incompatible with their ideal of personhood. So, it is not that this President, and the many Americans who think and act just like him, are actually stupid. No, it is far worse. They actually believe that the virtues of consideration, reflection and refining one’s own thoughts are sinful vices.

Consider his rather sad personal life. He was born into a wealthy family, with every want and every opportunity in life available to him. But instead of using this incredible good fortune to try and make some kind of difference in the world, upon entry into two of the country’s most prestigious and expensive colleges he quickly embraced fraternity life, alcoholism, drug abuse, and cheerleading. His gentleman’s Cs at Harvard and Yale were not a reflection of personal stupidity, they were a reflection of a hearty embrace of the American ideal of normalcy, conformity and happy averageness; C is the average grade, after all. And when alcohol and drugs had gotten the best of him, instead of embracing the opportunity to take real control of his own life, he turned instead to the ultimate manifestation of American normalcy, religion. He replaced one thought-crushing addiction with another.

His life, like so many Americans’ lives, is one that has been controlled from the outside rather than by himself. He was born into a rich family and he went into the family business. He became an alcoholic. He became super religious. His family, his culture and his vices have always told him where to go, what to do when he gets there, and how to act. And this is exactly the same way that many Americans live their lives today. Not by self-reflection, but by reflexively doing, saying and thinking the things they believe they’re supposed to, the things that everyone else does, the things that everyone else wants them to do. This is Bush’s constituency and this is his America. And that includes many Democrats and many on the left, as well.

It is very short-sighted and completely off point, then, when people make fun of him for being unintelligent. If he is anything, he is an inevitable product of American culture, American wealth and American ideals. His personal behavior, and his political decisions, have all been archetypical. He was fast, like the archetypical American, to embrace invasion, torture, retribution, etc., because these are American traditions. He was incompetent when it came to New Orleans because the system itself was incompetent. The President can pick up the phone and order the invasion of a country, but he has no power to help stranded Americans at the Superdome. That is not his fault, that is America.

When President Obama begins his term on Tuesday, there will be much cheering and celebration. And from some people there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Both, however, will be overreactions. And both will continue the American tradition of pinning all of our hopes and dreams onto others, or onto the actions or elections of one person, rather than taking ownership of our communal problems ourselves. Many Democrats who voted to invade Iraq, who voted for the Patriot Act, who continue to support the drug war and on and on will still be in power, and they will still be beholden to the same corporations and powerful interests they always have been. And we shouldn’t forget that this includes Obama, a creation of the party system, himself.

But more importantly, the American archetype that George W. Bush embodies will still be everywhere around us, in our families, our media and our government. Our culture, in its suburbs and shopping malls, on American Idol and at the Grammy awards, embraces the gentleman’s C every way it can, and will continue to do so under President Obama.

So, adiós to President Bush, and I hope that his post-Presidential life affords him some opportunity to reflect on the wonders and pitfalls of existence. Because the many who have died in Iraq and elsewhere won’t have that same chance.

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Music:

Everything Changes

Hope

Speeches and Clips:

Reagan 1980

Quayle 1988

W 1992

Gore 1992

Cuomo 1992

Clinton 1992

Bush 1992

W 2000

Cheney 2001

Obama 2004

Lieberman 2008

Palin 2008

Obama 2008

Obama 2008

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Every year at about this time, just like clockwork, you can expect to read a news story about a teacher who gets into trouble for telling his or her students something that is true: the truth that human beings invented Santa Claus.

Here’s one such story from this year, this time about a teacher in the UK who has since been barred from teaching in her area after blurting out that Father Christmas was a fictional character. And, as if that was not enough, she was also forced to write a letter of apology. Yes, please apologize for telling children in a school something which is true.

Most people think that Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or any of the myths they teach their kids are just bits of harmless fun, and some Scrooge McGrinchy like myself shouldn’t try and ’spoil’ everyone else’s good time. But when, every single year, we read about actual educators, people whose job it is to teach others, get in trouble for telling the truth, we no longer have the luxury of viewing these little myths as harmless fun. This teacher will now have a difficult time getting a job simply because she dared to tell her students a true thing. This turns out to be neither harmless or fun. Don’t we want teachers, of all people, to tell their students the truth?

Mythology and fiction can rightly be used as metaphor, to convey ideas in ways that people can easily understand or relate to. But when said mythology or fiction begins to impinge on someone’s ability to teach, or starts to affect how we all treat each other, then its value as metaphor is outweighed by its damage to society. When the myth of Santa Claus or the myth of Allah or the myth of Jesus affect how we get along with each other, then their value as myth is no longer greater than the personal and societal consequences of perpetuating them.

Every year parents all over the planet continue telling their children the myths of Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle and so on, and every year someone gets in trouble for telling those children the truth. Only in an upside-down and backwards universe would it be considered harmless fun and perfectly normal for parents to intentionally lie to their children, and then be angry when someone comes along and tells their children the truth.

Only in an upside-down and backwards universe – such as ours.

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And so it is telling and, I hope, a portend of an imminent cultural change, that the last real argument which the supernaturally-inclined cling to revolves around a perceived need for religious or spiritual belief not of one specific kind, but of any kind.

Most Christians, for instance, do not attend church on a regular basis, and most do not believe that the Bible is, from cover to cover, 100% historically accurate. Yet those very same Christians will still vehemently argue for the necessity of their belief, even while they scoff at the idea of a man living in a whale for three days, or easily dismiss the idea of stoning people who work on the Sabbath. Christians all over the planet still say that the Bible is the “The Word of the Lord” every Sunday, but after church most then go about arguing over what in the Bible is real and what isn’t, what is outdated Hebrew law and what isn’t, and what verses they like and which ones they don’t. Even while they insist that their children be taught those stories as fact in Sunday School, they choose personally to treat them as metaphor.

We are left, then, with a Christian church which largely dismisses its own mythology while desperately clinging to the notion that, without that mythology, life itself would be pointless.

In this video, Christian theologian Karl Giberson says that the main reason he believes in the Judeo-Christian god is because he thinks the world is more “interesting” with it than without. Michael Shermer then quickly points out that that is not, in fact, a reason for belief in God, only a justification or rationalization. Giberson does go on, then, to give the actual reason for his belief, which simply is that he was born into it, and has chosen to stick with it. He readily admits that his religious belief, which he makes a living off of promoting, is merely a product of his culture and family, not of any rational thought process he himself undertook. So, at no point does this Christian theologian defend any Papal decrees or Biblical stories, he simply insists that it is the act of his religious faith which is important, not what he actually believes or why. He even says that Christianity is not the only “genuine” religious experience to be had in the world.

Most of the criticism of the overtly non-religious in our society comes not from religious fundamentalists, but from this nebulous societal middle which the likes of Giberson inhabit. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and so forth do not receive a lot of attention or criticism from conservatives and religious fundamentalists. But they do receive an inordinate amount of attention from this more liberal religious center, who constantly admonish them to be less rigid and less harsh, and whose main criticism of their arguments is that they lump all religious beliefs together, ignoring the fact that some religious people are hard-line conservatives and some are more liberally enlightened.

But although these liberally religious or spiritual people can all easily list what they don’t believe (in order to show that they are not crazy fundamentalists), when it comes to what they believe all they have to offer are meaningless phrases about ineffable spirits and holy mysteries. They reject most of the beliefs which define their religion, but still insist that they are religious.

And so this is the state of modern religion, which only persists in a civilized society because its remaining practitioners spend most of their time publicly denying its core precepts (or never learning them in the first place) and simply substituting their own. Most religious people do not actually believe in the story of Jonah, or transubstantiation, or Sharia law, and most do not support honor killings and arranged marriages. But most do believe in kindness and charity, and most believe in personal freedom and liberty. Kindness and charity, though, are not inventions of religion, and they are certainly not unique to any one religion, making phrases like “Christian charity” or “Muslim kindness” superbly meaningless. And there is nothing in the Bible or Koran which extolls the ideals of personal liberty as spelled out in the enlightened US Constitution, yet many Christians in America still insist that American liberty and Judeo-Christianity are somehow intertwined.

I can only hope that these logical inconsistencies are the last, desperate throes of a dying tradition. And I can only hope this is an indication that there is a large segment of humanity who will be ready, in the next few decades, to openly renounce religion altogether, to abandon their last, desperate belief in belief, to let go of their faith in faith, and to help move humanity forward into a more enlightened and peaceful era.

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If only it was a simple matter of dietary choice. If only it was an easy question of watching someone eat rye bread instead of wheat, or drinking earl grey tea instead of chamomile. But no, those are simply preferences, and do not involve the bloody slaughter of millions of living beings.

Being a vegan is not simply a matter of dietary choice or preference, it is an ethical code, a deeply-held wish to live in harmony with one’s fellow sentient earthlings instead of dismissing them as chattel. They bleed and die in the same way that we do, and vegans are simply people who stand up and say that we are not going to cause this bleeding and death, as it is totally unnecessary, and we certainly would not want someone to do the same to us. We will not eat these animals if we do not have to, we will not turn them into shoes if we don’t have to, we will not use them to test soap and cosmetics (we certainly don’t have to), and we will not think of them as our property, as ‘things’ we can simply use, as we would use a hammer or a toothbrush, and then throw them away.

The old argument that a turkey or a pig is just an animal holds no water since we, ourselves, are animals. The argument that a turkey or a pig is so stupid as to deserve none of our most basic decency holds no water, as many humans are crushingly stupid – some by choice, others by birth – and if we started judging moral worthiness based upon intelligence, the SATs would take on an entirely new, far more urgent importance. And the argument that humans are naturally superior to those animals which aren’t human holds no water, as superiority is in the eye of those who assume it. Humans may be smarter than the other animals, but many animals are much stronger and faster than we are, and every other animal on this planet is somehow able to survive without electricity and indoor plumbing. Most human beings would not survive if society collapsed tomorrow. Certainly not the elderly, certainly not those in wheelchairs, certainly not most of the very young, and certainly not most of those who require daily insulin shots or other daily prescription medication in order to live. Most of us superior humans would not last five minutes without our technological comforts and scientific advancements, yet the inferior animals that we share the planet with get along fine without them.

And besides which, if morality or ethics actually mean anything, then they ought to transcend human hierarchy. Instead, our history is one of denying basic moral consideration to those considered lower in the hierarchy by popular opinion, those of a certain skin color, gender, nationality, creed or sexuality. It was not very long ago that women were denied democracy in America simply because they were women, and it was not very long ago that this country had separate drinking fountains for people with “separate” skin color. Our own history shows that we always claim moral superiority and then quickly go about finding the best ways to oppress, shoot, maim, torture and slaughter whomever we feel to be inferior.

The animal carcass which is the center of most Thanksgiving and Christmas meals in many countries was once a living, sentient creature, who was born into misery and captivity and died a bloody, painful death. The meat of that animal that is carved and served on a plate once had blood flowing through it, blood that was pumped by a heart, blood which went to a brain, a brain which housed a consciousness, which was aware of its own heart, its own life, and the lives of others. That brain received visual information from a pair of eyes, just like we do, and those eyes showed that consciousness a world in full color, just like ours do, with a big blue sky and beautiful green grass. That consciousness also had ears, which introduced it to the singing of the other birds in the trees and to the chirping of crickets at night.

But the only humans that consciousness ever met in its brief existence were solely intent upon killing it. The only interaction that animal had with humans was in the context of misery, confinement and death. To those animals, nearly all humans must be torturing, vile murderers. They might come in contact with some people who are nice to them, but even then those humans are still intent upon the creature’s death, no matter how nice they are. Even those nice humans still consider that consciousness to have no inherent worth except in what it can do for them, and are only counting down the days and minutes until that animal’s bloody slaughter.

Increasingly, there are people who are claiming a kind of joy or happiness in being able to slaughter an animal for themselves. In this article, a mother who takes her daughter to slaughter a turkey says that the experience turned out to be “surprisingly lively and fun.” The turkey in this story is just a thing to kill, not a consciousness, and all kinds of moral and intellectual superiority is claimed by the author for having herself ‘lived through’ the experience. But the fact that the animal did not also live through it is only a footnote. And so this morally and intellectually superior human being even manages to make killing all about herself; what did the killing do for her, what was it like for her, what did she learn from it, etc. It is this extreme level of self-centeredness, then, in our dealings with the other animals, that vegans like myself object to perhaps more than anything.

Yet this same accusation of self-centeredness is exactly what vegans and vegetarians face every time they must explain what they will or won’t eat, or why they won’t come to a family meal and simply look away while everyone else happily eats the last remnants of a doomed consciousness. If there is one thing that people do not understand about the ethical choice of being a vegan, it is that, unlike most human endeavors, it is not about the person making the choice. It is not an act of vanity or narcissism, it is a choice of consciousness. It is a choice for the lives of billions of innocent animals who are tortured and slaughtered daily. It is a choice for the health of the ecosystem and all future life on the planet. And it is also a choice to live in congregation with those who are different from us rather than in conflict.

There is a verse in Isaiah which is part of a section about a mythical peaceable kingdom, one in which “the wolf shall live with the lamb.” Our morality towards others is often just like the morality of the wolf – eat or be eaten. But humans also live with animals every day as members of our own little peaceable kingdoms. Cats and dogs are considered by many to be family members, and we would never think that we could simply do anything to them that we wish, let alone send them off to a slaughterhouse to be made into a holiday meal. But that is exactly what we are saying every day about chickens and cows and turkeys, that we can and should simply use them as things to be slaughtered, instead of simply leaving them alone to live or die by their own choices.

It is all of this and more that is going through the minds of vegans and vegetarians every Thanksgiving and Christmas, times that we must contemplate choosing between eating with our families or living according to our most basic ideals, and whether we can simply set those ideals aside and watch people eat a once living, breathing, thinking creature, or risk offending our families who simply don’t understand the depths of our feelings. While many dismayed relatives and friends must think that this is an issue of diet or of simply being a contrarian, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Holidays ought to be happy occasions, ones filled with good eating and good friends. But for vegans and vegetarians, holidays are conundrums. It is not that vegans don’t want to have fun on the holidays, it’s that they cannot have fun when the centerpiece of the experience goes against their most basic ethic. This is why there are so many vegan Thanksgiving potlucks and community meals that are now annual traditions all across the country. Because to many of our relatives, in the context of our family meals, which are usually centered around turkey carcasses, we are simply anti-social contrarians. We are the party-poopers, the buzz-kills, the do-gooders who won’t simply shut up and be happy.

It is no wonder, then, in that context, that many vegans and vegetarians will no longer eat a Thanksgiving meal with their families, choosing instead to eat their own meal and then go visit their relatives afterwards. This choice must, again, seem to family and friends to be incredibly self-centered. But it is not. It is a choice to eat good, healthy food, which does not involve bloody slaughter, and to have a happy holiday, free from unnecessary death. It is a choice for the animals, not for us, and if you are an omnivorous parent or relative of a vegan or vegetarian and you are reading this, please remember that you can eat whatever you want at Thanksgiving, in whatever environment you wish; the only thing that your vegan son or daughter or nephew or niece is asking is to be able to make that same choice.

To those here in America, I wish you a happy and safe Thanksgiving. I also wish you a compassionate Thanksgiving. I hope you have compassion for your vegan or vegetarian family members who are facing what is probably now an annual ethical dilemma, and I hope that you have at least some compassion for the millions of animals slaughtered for this occasion, like the one that will sit in the middle of your dinner table, who did not need to be.

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It is unclear exactly what people think is wrong with this video. Turkeys get slaughtered every single day in places just like the one Sarah Palin happened to be visiting that day, and they get slaughtered in precisely the manner shown. Some people seem to think that the reason it’s funny is because it makes her look a bit oblivious, as if she just wasn’t aware of what was going on behind her, and that if she had been aware, she surely would have stopped the interview and moved it someplace else.

Except that, of course, she knew exactly what was going on behind her. The problem isn’t that she was oblivious to it, the problem is that she didn’t see anything wrong with it. The fellow in the background doing the slaughtering, in her mind, might just as well have been pruning a tree for all she cared about those animals losing their lives.

It’s odd that so many people who will, next Thursday, eat a slaughtered turkey just like the ones in the video, seem to think that there’s something wrong with slaughtering the turkeys in this video, or that at least there’s something wrong with showing it on camera. The disconnection between the food people eat and where that food comes from could not be made more clear by this strange dichotomy.

And lest it be forgotten, the reason she was even at the slaughterhouse that day was to carry out the absurd American tradition of ‘pardoning’ a turkey. The very notion of doing such a thing is a sign that, somewhere deep in the American consciousness, there is a stirring of the faintest guilt, a glimmer of a basic awareness that there is something incongruous about a society’s morals when it has the means to live on a plant-based diet, but chooses to slaughter and ingest sentient creatures anyway.

One of the strangest of American traditions is this turkey pardoning which goes on at the white house every year and which also apparently goes on in many states. It is doubtful that most Americans would have any idea of where this tradition of turkey pardoning even comes from, since most probably couldn’t care any less about it either way. But if that’s the case, then why does the government keep doing it? Why do the press cover it every year as a photo op?

Another story making the rounds today is this one about a man who was asked to remove his turban in a building and was given as a reason “this is the United States.” But the story is not about rampant nationalism, it is about the western tradition that it is somehow impolite for men to wear hats of any kind indoors. We have all seen men taking off their hats when going inside a building, or when saying the pledge of allegiance or when singing the national anthem. Why a man wearing a hat during one of these occasions is rude or disrespectful, I cannot say. In fact, can any of us? Can you? Rude to whom? To what? In the turban incident, the building the man was going into had a chapel in it, and so he was told that if he wore his turban (or a hat of any kind) indoors it would be rude to the almighty deity.

But it is a very odd tradition indeed that hats on men are somehow offensive if worn in certain specific situations, while hats on women, according to the same tradition, are acceptable anytime. Does anyone who actually believes that a head covering can be rude know why that is? Can it be explained why a normal article of clothing is somehow horribly discourteous in one situation but not in another?

The modern American Thanksgiving meal is centered around a deceased turkey. And yet the very first thanksgiving, the one we are supposed to be commemorating every year, had much more to do with corn than with anything else. Do most Americans celebrating thanksgiving every year ever wonder why they’re supposed to eat a turkey that day? Or do they just accept it as tradition and not even for a second contemplate eating anything else? I suspect so.

Our culture is rife with these traditions that actually don’t go back very far, but are extremely ingrained. But even if they did go back millennia or eons, few people today even know or care where they come from, and most people don’t bother to stop and wonder why they still do them. And so men feel compelled to take off their hats indoors for no good reason, and people eat turkeys and pigs and so on for no good reason, and humanity goes through its daily, weekly, monthly and yearly routines without a single thought about why things happen to be the way they are, and certain traditions, which should have been dropped long ago, are perpetuated by a kind of brute force apathy.

Those turkeys being slaughtered within feet of the governor of Alaska were bred and then killed for the tradition of eating turkey at thanksgiving, a tradition that there is no actual reason to perpetuate. If thanksgiving truly is a celebration of the harvest, then we should eat whatever we want from our harvest. We should eat what we, personally, want to eat, and what is good that year, not what someone else tells us we should.

The turban-wearing man from North Carolina comes from a culture, which has as a tradition, the idea that men are supposed to wear turbans, and that, in certain situations, taking one’s turban off would be disrespectful. How wonderfully ironic, then, that he would stumble upon a group of people who would tell him that, in their tradition, keeping it on was discourteous, even blasphemous. Two opposing traditions, total opposites, and neither one with any foundation in necessity or reason or logic. And the entire incident is a product of those traditions and nothing more.

Will we ever really take a good long look at ourselves and our traditions and question them? Or will we continue to believe in things just for the sake of believing them, and doing them just for the sake of doing them? For the sake of the animals we eat, for the sake of getting along with each other, for the sake of basic logic and reason, I hope we do.

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I love the Daily Show. It has been an island of sanity in an insane world ever since the Clinton administration. And yes, I’ve been watching for that long. In fact, I remember watching you on the Daily Show before it was cool to do so, back when you replaced Craig Kilborn and everyone else thought that the show sucked without him. And let’s be honest, for a while it did. But that was only because you were trying to do his show, and not your own. After a while, when the Daily Show really became your show, and you did it in your own style, I knew that there was nothing else like it on TV. And I told everyone I thought would be interested to watch you, but most thought you were lame, I’m sad to say.

But all of that is long in the past. Your show is now the late-night show to beat. And you’ve given the world Stephen Colbert, and the world thanks you for this. But with your stardom and your success, Jon, you seem to have at least one foot in the door of being part of the establishment. And with this has come an ever-increasing guest list on the Daily Show of conservatives and centrists and other media celebrities who already have a voice in their respective arenas.

On the conservative side, you’ve repeatedly had William Kristol, Bill O’Reilly and John McCain on your show, in addition to Newt Gingrich, Andrew Card, Ron Paul, Lynne Cheney, Peggy Noonan, Chris Wallace and so on. And, you’ve had every Bush press secretary on your show. Ari Fleischer, Scott McClellan, Tony Snow, and Dana Perino have all sat in the chair opposite you.

And then you’ve had centrists and Democrats like Doris Kearns Goodwin, Presidents Clinton and Carter, Senators Clinton and Obama, Al Gore, John Kerry, Al Franken, Michael Moore and so on.

In addition, you’ve presented us with a string of book authors, some we’ve heard of, many we haven’t, and I do applaud your show for being one of the only places where books are openly discussed on popular television.

And then there are the comedians and movie stars and musicians you have on to plug their latest project. We understand, Jon, that you have to do this to keep the corporation you work for happy, but most of the time, when someone tells me that “tonight’s guest is Adam Sandler,” I cannot change the channel fast enough.

Which brings me to my point. Jon, you are sitting pretty in life. You have a show where you can do basically anything you want. You and Colbert own Comedy Central, and they need you way more than you need them. And you’re financially set for life and will never have to work again. You could walk away from the Daily Show today and live the rest of your life in opulent splendor if you wish. Since you have this rare opportunity to do something that few people do, namely have a voice in popular culture that people listen to and respect for its honesty and integrity, I dare you in the next few years of your contract to use your show not to promote people who are already famous, who already have a voice in the media, but to promote the voices and causes and concerns of the people who have no voice in the media, who are fighting the establishment of corporate life and the Democratic/Republican hegemony, and who are trying to actually make the world a better place, not those who are simply promoting their own money-making agenda.

It’s true that ours is generally a celebrity-obsessed culture, but you, Jon, have a core audience that will sit and listen to unknown, non-telegenic authors discuss their latest book about war or history or whatever with no complaint. If they will tune in for that, then you can get them to tune in for anything. In fact, your friend Stephen Colbert has had, frankly, a much more diverse and interesting group of guests on his show than you have on yours as of late. My plea to you, Jon, as an intelligent human, and as a father, is to bring on your show those guests who are not Democrats or Republicans, who are not part of the establishment, who do not already have a voice in mainstream media. Because they will be the ones who will ultimately make the world a better place for your children to live in, not Peggy Noonan or John Kerry.

For instance, you talk a lot about gay rights and gay marriage on your show, but I can’t remember a single time when you’ve had a guest on to speak specifically in favor of gay rights. We hear, on your show, from the Bill O’Reillys and Bill Kristols about the “culture war,” but in response we only hear your personal opinion on the subject. How about hearing from someone directly affected by this conservative bigotry, and what their point of view is?

In general, your show is still better than anything else out there, and I have an enormous amount of respect for you personally. In addition, the writers and reporters on your show are, to a person, intelligent and hilarious and compelling, and your usually brilliant take on the news in the first segment of the show is really why people tune in every night. My challenge to you, then, is to use your established fame and credibility to not just give the already famous people of the world yet another place to appear on TV, but instead to help those who should be famous but aren’t get a foothold in popular culture. You can do it if you want to, Jon. You can use your show, as Colbert is doing, to help bridge the gap between old and new media, and between the old and new ways of thinking. The rest of us can only dream of ever having the reach or influence that you have achieved, and I know that if I had that kind of reach and influence, I would not squander it by becoming just another corporate media establishment.

Thanks, Jon, for making a great TV show and for giving me a reason to keep my cable. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do during an Obama administration, and I will continue to hope that you use your show to help change the world, not just make fun of it.

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Item one: The Matt Stone/Trey Parker Mormon musical is in the works. Gather up the kids, it’s time to play I Spy a Nephite on Broadway.

Item two: Informercial huckster Kevin Trudeau, the guy with a cure for just about everything, has been banned from our televisions for five years and ordered to pay millions in fines for lying to people. On the one hand, I’m glad for the comeuppance. But on the other hand, it’s painfully annoying to me that the human species is so gullible as to allow swindlers like him to be successful.

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Let’s start with BBC comedies. Sure, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Mr. Bean, yes, those are obvious, but how about Red Dwarf or The Young Ones? You’ll never see anything like those shows on staid, self-important American TV, and that’s a shame for us.

American TV is just bogged down with talk shows, but they’re either corporate celebrity advertising vehicles or they’re all about dysfunctional people living dysfunctional lives. Too bad America can’t have a talk show like the one Graham Norton does. It’s funny, raunchy, and also incredibly intelligent. He was on comedy central for a short time a few years ago, but not many Americans watched him, which is too bad. And if you really want to see a very odd clash of British and American cultures, check out his entire show all about the Dukes of Hazzard. It’s wonderfully strange to see this gay Brit interact with the self-serious, ultra-hetero Dukes universe, and the part where they re-create the opening credits is hilarious. And I simply would never have believed that there were any Dukes of Hazzard fans in Great Britain before seeing this. Honorable mention goes to shows like Have I Got News For You, The Friday Night Project, and the recently suspended Jonathan Ross on Friday Night. Yes, it’s a lot of celebrity crap, but it’s far smarter (and usually funnier) than anything you’ll see in American pop culture.

And then there is BBC news. The news organization itself is generally better than anything going in America, but America simply has no one in its media celebrity circle like Jeremy Paxman. For instance, if you want to see Ann Coulter treated with the respect she deserves, then watch his interview with her. American interviewers don’t try and go after actual answers to questions the way he does, and this is one of the reasons why our government gets away with so much chicanery.

There are some “American” TV shows I like (most of which are actually made in Canada), but British TV will always have a special place in my pop culture heart.

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For instance, as you are all aware, the War on Christmas ® is now officially an annual event, coinciding not so coincidentally with the Christmas ’season’ (which now runs from October to mid-January) every single year. And famed loud-talker Bill O’Reilly has already given us this year’s gift to be had, the “We Say Christmas” bumper sticker, which you will receive from his store with every purchase of $19.95 or more. Go there now before they run out.

As an aside, this does bring up one of those ‘meta’ issues. Namely, should said bumper sticker be given as a Christmas gift, or is the War on Christmas ® now its own gift-giving occasion as well? In other words, should I give this bumper sticker for Christmas or for the War on Christmas ®? It boggles the mind.

Anyway, since the WOC ® is here once again, I thought I’d offer the Christians who think that Christ needs to be put back into their holiday a few tips to help the cause.

1. Insist that Christmas no longer be a federal holiday.

Christmas is the only religious holiday which is recognized by the federal government. This has helped to encourage the secular and the religious non-Christians in America to adopt Christmas as their own gift-giving, tree-decorating, family-gathering occasion. As Christians, you should be the loudest voices of anger about the federal government getting involved with your most sacred of days. Begin the angry email/letter campaign now – it’s what you’re good at. Get your evangelical preachers to shout it loudly from their stages, get your Limbaughs and your O’Reillys to yell about it on the radio, and stage loud, violent protests outside the offices of your congresspersons. “Christmas for Christians” could be a good, catchy slogan on a sign, as could “Keep Your Government Off My God.”

Remember, Christmas is your day, not some dirty atheist’s.

2. Stop Helping to Spread Non-Christian Christmas Myths.

Santa Claus, Jack Frost, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and the Nutcracker Suite have absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Jesus Christ. By teaching your children about Santa Claus and his elves and his nine flying reindeer, you are helping to confuse their understanding of Christian theology. By conflating all of these secular myths with your religious holiday, you are encouraging the spread of that holiday to the non-Christian world, and you’re helping to completely dilute all of the Christianity out of it. By allowing your children to watch all of these secular TV Christmas programs every single December, and by telling them that Santa Claus exists and is also omniscient and omnipotent, and by encouraging them to sing all of these secular songs about Rudolph and Frosty and so on, you’re helping to turn them away from Jesus and towards rampant secularism. Your trip to the mall to have your child’s picture taken with Santa might as well be a trip to Richard Dawkins’ house to have your picture taken with a giant double-helix – neither has anything to do with Jesus.

For that matter, the Bible never mentions “chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” and if it had been snowing during Jesus’ birth, he and his family would surely have frozen to death in their manger, so you should never, ever sing “Let it Snow” during the Christmas season.

3. Stop Participating in Non-Christian Christmas Traditions.

Every Christmas, both Christians and non-Christians put up extravagant Christmas trees with all kinds of lights and decorations, and Christians and non-Christians string up sometimes thousands of lights on their houses, along with manger scenes in their yards and/or Santas on their roofs. And don’t forget about the electric candles in the windows, and the wreaths and sometimes extra lights on cars.

Cities and towns get in the act, too, stringing up all kinds of extra lights on the streets and putting up community Christmas trees.

Christians, you should be the first people to say enough is enough to all of this extravagant obsession with lights and decorations. All of the extra lights and decorations come from the ancient pagan celebration of winter solstice, the longest night of the year. The reason those ancient heathens were so obsessed with lights and decorations during these celebrations was because of the darkness and the cold, not because of Jesus’ birth.

Christians, if you really want to honor Jesus’ birth, go to church more than just twice a year (Christmas and Easter), and forget about all of the lights and the wreaths and the secular holiday parties and so forth every December.

4. Celebrate Advent.

Most Christians don’t even seem to know that the Christian church has a contemplative season called Advent which takes up most of December. Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter. It’s supposed to be a time of quiet reflection for Christians, a time to prepare for the coming of your Savior. John the Baptist literally tells you to “repent” and to “prepare the way of the Lord” in your own Bible.

But for most Christians, preparation for Jesus’ birth seems to involve a lot of drinking and rampant consumerism (more on this in a sec).

You won’t hear any Easter hymns being sung in most Christian churches during Lent, but for some reason most Christians start singing Christmas carols right around December 1, which is usually about the same time the season of Advent begins. You’ll also hear many Christians say “Merry Christmas!” during Advent, but I don’t think you’ll hear any say “Happy Easter!” during Lent. And Christians insist that their children perform in Christmas plays and Christmas concerts in schools every single December, right in the midst of Advent.

As the song tells us, the Christian season of Christmas has twelve days in it, beginning on Christmas day. Not beginning on December 1st, not beginning when the mall decorations go up in October. Christians, if you really want Christmas back, you’re going to have to reclaim Advent first.

5. Stop with the Rampant Consumerism and the General Excess.

You expect us to take your religious holiday seriously, but then you go and despoil it by making it all about rampant consumerism. Christians, if you want to give gifts, how about giving the world the gift of a quiet Christmas? You should be the first in line to say enough is enough to all of the obligatory ‘holiday’ parties at work, as well as the increased traffic and the long lines at shopping malls and the stupidity of fighting over Tickle Me Elmos.

If you really want to end the war on Christmas, then you should celebrate it the same way the Jews celebrate Hanukkah: quietly, in your own homes, with your own communities, with no extravagance or drunken debauchery.

And this is where all of the other tips naturally combine. If Christmas was a religious holiday, not a federal one, then you could celebrate it quietly, in your own way. If you were not so obsessed with lights and decorations and songs about chestnuts and anthropomorphic snowmen, then you could focus on your Christian myths instead. If you didn’t insist that everyone else, even if they aren’t Christian, loudly wish you a “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” every time you walked into any public place in December, you could keep your sacred holiday for yourself, where it would be the most meaningful.

And If you celebrated Advent up to December 24, not Christmas, then maybe Christmas would actually mean something to you when it arrived on December 25. As it is now, Christmas is simply the end of a long, drawn-out process of partying and gift-buying and general excessiveness that makes everyone involved exhausted.

And yet you have the temerity and the stupidity to accuse others of waging a war on it.

No, Christians, it’s you who has waged a war on the rest of us, by inflicting your holiday on us – Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, Wiccan, whatever – whether we want it or not. By doing this, you, yourselves, are helping to make Christmas a secular tradition. By insisting that trees be decorated and lights be strung up in town squares and on city streets, and that TV be filled every December with secular programs about toy-making elves, you, yourselves, are the ones taking Christ out of Christmas.

This year, my Christian friends, I challenge you to be different. I challenge you to follow the steps I’ve outlined here to begin the process of taking back your holiday. I challenge you to celebrate Christmas the same way Mary and Joseph did, without excess, without brutishness or egotism, and without the secular myths and traditions that you, yourselves, have either co-opted or perpetuated.

I dare you.

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With black and latino voters both helping to get California’s Proposition 8 enacted, it seems that some of those people feel that their culturally conservative religious beliefs are more important than being sympathetic to the hopes and dreams of another beleaguered minority. As groups that have themselves been beleaguered minorities, I find the behavior of those blacks and latinos who voted against gay marriage to be both inexplicable and inexcusable.

And I can’t help but think that this does not bode well for us skeptics, atheists or humanists.

Undoubtedly President Obama will meet with various religious leaders in the next few months. And perhaps President Obama will continue the tradition of the White House prayer breakfast and/or the national day of prayer. And that’s all fine. But will President Obama meet with anyone from the avowedly non-religious community? Will the issue of civil rights for the non-religious even be publicly discussed in an Obama administration?

Or will the voice of the non-religious, those of us who pay taxes and do everything else that a typical American citizen is expected to do, continue to be excluded from our own governance?

I keep hearing about the “new day” that America has reached, and for some, it is a new day, indeed. And I applaud that. But until the civil rights of all groups, including the non-religious, are championed by everyone fighting for civil rights, we will continue to have liberty and justice only for some.

And unless he makes a distinct effort to include us, Obama’s America will not seem all that much different to the millions of non-religious Americans than Bush’s.

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