A Few Thoughts Through the Mucus...

I got my flu shot at the doctor's last Friday, and lo and behold, it kicked my mild sniffles into one of those hellish end-of-the summer colds. Ick. The beauty of the blooming Golden Rod does not help either. In spite of the mass of mucus, and learning the hard way not to eat asparagus a couple of hours before bed ( I love the little green things but it is a diuretic par excellence ), I am determined to write. I was up at least 4 times last night..at one point I saw one eyeball on the other side of the bed, and I mumbled something about it being the asparagus and not my prostate.

All this prepared me for the coverage of the March of the Terminally Befuddled yesterday.

It was kind of breathtaking. There was crank America on parade. I saw the signs, a few Confederate flags, veiled crap about triggers, and 'this time we came unarmed.' I was tranfixed. It was like watching a squirrel running into rush hour traffic. There was one guy passing out stuff and looking around like a gerbil on amphetamines. You could tell that he wanted to scream "Obama's a ni***r...he's a ni***r! We need a white president!" so bad his nuts were about to explode. Even the guys with the Confederate flags did not want to risk showing up on Fox News giving voice to the whole racist subtext that the Glenn Becks and the Corporations are subtly stirring up. So they screamed their slogans, had their 'Christian Nation' placards, and probably pissed in the bushes.

It is easy to look and laugh at this crap, but I must voice a warning, too.

There is a movie coming out in the next few months that should be required viewing for all progressives and liberals. It is called "Agora". (Check out the trailer on 'agorathemovie.com') It is the story of Hyapatia, her life and death as a philosopher and mathematician in Alexandria in the 4th century. She was regarded as the equal of the male scientists and philosophers. She was hated by Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, who with his ragtag army of desert dwelling monks and other 'Joe Six-Pack" type of Christians finally break into the great Library of Alexandria, and destroy it burning the hundreds of thousands of scrolls, and effectively destroying about 95% of the collected knowledge of the ancient and classical world, and in the process lobotomizing western culture. The scenes of the crowds, screaming and waving their crosses, breaking into and destroying the library made me ill. Hyapatia was seized by a herd of Cyril's' Jesus Thugs, beaten, dragged into a church, and flayed alive in front of the altar , and her dismembered body was then burned. Cyril is now remembered as St. Cyril of Alexandra, and is called a 'Doctor of the Church". These actions ushered in a period called the "Dark Ages", a time of ignorance, superstition, genocide of the Cathars, and numerous crusades and Jew killings. Thomas Aquinas and his philosophy are not enough to redeem the ugliness of the dark ages.

There is a lesson for us moderns in this true, historical story of the Death of the Mind at the hands of religious zealots.

Never underestimate the power of large groups of ignorant people.

Tim