Heinrich Heine

Well, whatta you know! Barbarians have the same life expectancy!

A barbarian is defined as one belonging to a people or tribe considered to be a primitive civilization filled with fierce, brutal and cruel persons who are uncultured and insensitive. If there has been a century in the history of Homo sapiens when we didn’t have any barbarians acting up, please let me know. The Roman Empire conquered half the known earth, but expired when barbarians sponsored events in the Rome Colosseum where gladiator-slaves lived or died when thumbs of many thousands and white-robed senators went up or down after the fight. They laughed and cheered as imported lions and tigers killed members of a new tribe known as Christians after the Jew Jesus Christ. In the medieval period we had the barbarians under the directions of popes from Rome burn “heretics” at stakes in various Italian cities. Now Catholic dioceses are filing bankruptcy so  they don’t have to pay billions to millions of victims of barbaric “celibate” priests around the world.

Can you imagine 200,000 Spanish children molested since 1940? Before the Irish chased the Vatican out of Ireland it had to pay off 14,500 sex abuse victims attacked while in Catholic juvenile facilities. Sometimes all-powerful kings and queens turned themselves and their tribes into barbarians by adopting weird customs and costumes. It happens every year in fashion houses and hair stylists today. Wigs have been popular, but Louis XIV of France, the builder of Versailles, took the fashion to extremes in the 17th century. He employed 48 wigmakers to make him a thousand wigs, some weighing three to four pounds and often requiring 10 heads of human hair for each wig. They cost About $10,000 each! He also had 60 other servants to serve his needs. Cheap wigs were made of horse and goat hair. During the plague years corpses of deserted men and women were often buried bald. The poor carried scissors. In 1771 the city of Paris had 945 wig makers. By the way, English criminal judges still wear wigs as a symbol of office.  

The greatest barbarian in history has been Adolf Hitler

Born in 1889 and baptized a Catholic, Adolf Hitler fought in World War I and got infected by politics. He was appointed chancellor of Germany by 85-year-old President Paul von Hindenburg on January 30, 1933. Other barbarians had started WW 1. Just 37 days after his appointment, Hitler and his Nazi Party SA storm troopers burned about 20,000 books in the main street of Dresden, in front of offices of a newspaper supported by the Social Democratic Party. Photographs showing armed troops standing by the book blaze were sent all over Germany. In 1821 German poet Heinrich Heine had written that those who had banned books would burn books and then burn people. In other words, he predicted the ovens of Auschwitz. Life expectancy in the Divided States of America has dropped to 76 years because of an expensive maelstrom of insurance and health care corporations who have never fulfilled the idea of “do no harm.” We pay double the world average for less care. Just 90 years after the Dresden bonfire, we have the Florida-based Moms for Liberty – really Women for Stupidity – who are into the book-banning business backed by Trumplican politicians waiting with matches.  

The evidence is clear – there is no biologic difference among homo sapiens

The Human Genome Project proved that humans on earth share 99.9 percent of their DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and our bodies are made up of trillions of cells. Each cell is a copy of a single cell that divides itself to make all of the cells in your body. Your DNA, genes and chromosomes work together to tell your body how to form and function and to create who you are. DNA writes your instruction manual. Four chemical bases, of which there are an estimated three billion in the body, make up the manual. More than 99% of the bases are the same in every person. What remains—less than 1%--makes a person unique.

The science of genetics is complex when compared to some other sciences. There are 20,000 to 25,000 genes in bodies and sometimes things go wrong – and new syndromes do strange things. I’m going to stop at this point. Genetic scientists say the public has got to learn enough about the field to understand there are no races – just one, the human race. To sum up, the planet would be in an apocalyptic state if four billion males looked like Adam or Tarzan and four billion females looked like Eve or Jane. If Joe and Jane Sixpack can learn this, it ends race discrimination, affirmative action programs, criminal profiling, racial terrorism, other negative concepts of race. Societies will eventually function much better. Genetic scientists, looking forward to the 2030 Census, have asked the government to remove the section where one identifies race.

As the result of genome and DNA discoveries about Homo sapiens, they summarize their work: “Racial categories, assigned to people based on their appearance, geographic origin and other supposed attributes, got their start during the dawn of Western science in 18th century Europe. White Europeans, who then had no knowledge of human genetics and little meaningful contact with other cultures, placed themselves at the pinnacle. For centuries now, the categories have been used to divide and perpetuate every version of harm – enslavement, violence, an eclipse of opportunity. We shouldn’t be asking people to identify by ‘race’ at all.”

Science tells us that we all started to move across the world from central Africa about 65,000 years ago. Bodies and evidence dropped thousands of years ago in trails around the globe have been examined and dated on the human chart. Scientific knowledge is slowly destroying the myths and fantasies created by religions.  

If humans survive climate change, many churches will be fast-food restaurants

Here’s a rather shocking statistic: for the first time in history, a minority of Americans belongs to a church or synagogue! Some religions do a terrific job of committing churchicide. Men dominating the executive chairs in the boardroom of the Southern Baptist Convention have just signed their own death warrant by ousting churches from membership that have women on the pastoral staff.

This is the reaction of one female pastor: “A church foolish enough to discriminate against the gender that does 90% of the work doesn’t deserve to survive.”

Even the Tennessee Snake Handlers have taken a big hit – and there are still lots of moccasin and rattlesnakes around. Buzz Thomas, a retired minister, attorney and superintendent of schools in Tennessee, has a load of advice for his fellow ministers: “God may not be dead, but his church is headed for hospice if we don’t get our heads out of our ecclesiastical backsides. Went to a church in a deep Southern town last Sunday and counted five young people among all the white heads. If you are minister and serious about growing your church while watching others circling the drain, first, you are not the Republican or Democratic Party at prayer. God’s precinct is the universe. Call both parties to account. Remember: Jesus’ activism was so threatening the religious and political poobahs murdered him. If you want your church to thrive in the 21st century, you’ll need to brush up on climate change, the No. 1 environmental issue of young people. They’re the ones who must live on this hot, stormy, drought-stricken hellhole we’ve created. The church should be like a good Irish pub. You don’t have to believe in anything or behave in a particular way. The first thing is community. Acceptance. Belonging. It’s time we quit trying to make people believe the unbelievable.”  

Speaking of the unbelievable. Here’s a whole bunch…  

I love the story of the airline pilot who announced a landing at the Belfast, Ireland, airport: “Welcome to Belfast. Put your watches back one hour and 300 years.” He had to know the religious, military and governmental history of Northern Ireland and the English who murdered each other, ending with “The Troubles” which saw 30 more years of murder, assassination, bombs and “accidents.” I keep asking historians: “Can you give me a year when there was not a religious war?”

I see our new Trumplican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wants to take us back to the 18th century when it comes to morality and religion. Going to force George Washington to give his 125 slaves Bible time for an afternoon break? Thomas Jefferson is going to teach and elaborate about the Ten Commandments to his 600 slaves while they hoe tobacco plants? Mike: was this when America was “great?” Whatta guy for Black kids to emulate while dreaming about becoming president! Mike claims the Bible is his “personal worldview.” Well, Mike, what does the Bible say about abortion, transgenders, lesbians and nightshirts made of cotton and wool?

Mike says he loves all people “regardless of their lifestyle choices.” Here he is, working as an attorney for the nutty Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a certified “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and he loves everybody. The SPLC has been following, recording and accounting for anti-government and hate groups for half a century. It currently maintains files on 702 anti-government and 523 hate groups.   The state of Maine has only one hate group, North Dakota has three, and Florida, Texas, California and the area around Washington, D.C. have dozens of both.  

Speaking of Maine and guns

Mike sent a clip around saying the mass shooting of 18K and 13W “was caused by 20th century American reforms (he didn’t list any!), no-fault divorce laws, radical feminism, government sanctioned killing of the unborn, a liberal amoral society, and by young Americans taught there is no right and wrong.” Gee, nothing about 435 million firearms in a country where six percent of adults go bonkers each year according to the American Psychiatric Association.

On Fox Lies on the Sean Hannity show he went into his views on firearms and waxed poetic: “The end of the day, it’s, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns. It’s not the weapons. At the end of the day, you have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment.” No wonder we have 20 million assault rifles and billions of rounds of military ammo in the hands of people who just have hearts. Mike, hearts are just pumps like the sump pump in basements. Why are firearms flooding basements, streets and homes in America? Maybe we should try something like education to get blood flowing to brains from hearts. Why not have Congress debate and vote on a bill that would require every household in America to have an AR-15 and 1,000 rounds of military ammo available to a trained member or leader of the household?

Remember, during and after the American Revolution, every household had to have a musket and become a member of the federal militia. After all, it takes a good guy with an AR-15 to kill a bad guy with an AR-15.