330 Comments

reality is what you believe.but philosophers argue over it.

NPR Science Fridays Always presenting new possibilities.I am talking about Human governance.

How we govern ourselves.How our monkey brains cause us to fear a king.and cause a king to instill fear in his subjects.

Like monkeys. When you know the king will gouge your eye out,it seems pretty real.

Monkeys do that to each other, you know.They don't like someone, they bite hes face off.

Expand full comment

The abortion issue is not about morality or even religion. It is found nowhere in the Bible.

Until now, the abortion issue has simply been about money, period. In fact, the abortion issue never really existed until the 1970s, when the GOP realized it was a colossal campaign cash machine.

Furthermore, it was never about children either. The anti-abortion crowd doesn't give a damn about kids or even fetuses. (If they really cared about kids, they’d stop blocking Democrats on Climate Crisis legislation.) Being against abortion simply allows Republicans to feel morally superior and self-righteous.

What the abortion issue is really about today, however, is far more serious than even women's health or women's rights – as serious as those issues are.

The abortion issue is in fact the legal epicenter in the fight to save U.S. democracy.These far-right religious zealots are using the right-wing Roberts Supreme Court to hand down a decision on abortion that codifies into law their religious belief that 'a human soul is created at conception' – again, a religious belief that has absolutely no factual basis in medical science whatever.

What this all boils down to is that such a decision will give their religious beliefs legal precedence over medical science.

This will lead to a Constitutional catastrophe, since such a legal precedent will amount to an end-run around the Constitution. allowing these religious zealots to then use this legal precedent to give their religious beliefs legal authority over not just medical science – but over science in general.

Once such a legal precedent is set, it can then be argued as a legal basis to affect or alter other laws. Such an argument would no doubt be favorably viewed by the current right-wing Roberts Supreme Court.

What’s more, this outcome can be achieved thereafter in other cases by a simple SCOTUS edict, bypassing legislation, referendum, or the consent of – or even the knowledge of – the American Public.

The establishment of a legal precedent has been used many times to reach far beyond its original intent or purpose. And such power in the hands of these religious fanatics would not hesitate to be used.

If this sounds far-fetched, it isn’t. All the madness we see today was inconceivable only a few years ago. And the it-can't-happen-here mentality is making it all but inevitable.

As author and intelligence expert Malcolm Nance puts it, if these fanatics are not stopped, the THE HANDMAID'S TALE will be no longer just a novel – but a documentary.

Expand full comment

Have to say I'm not feeling terribly reassured rn knowing that there are folks out there who spend their hard earned coin to find out what goes on behind Ann Coulter's paywall.

Expand full comment

I mentioned it because you made a blanket statement, that was not true. Thinking about our behaviour is good, but sloppy thingking can lead to sloppy answers.

Expand full comment

A far as I know there is no historical evidence supporting the Herod vs babies story. There is also no hitorical evidence for the existance of the jezus character as described in the bible though som sort of itenerant apocalyptic rabbi fitting some aspects could have existed.

I think that human beings have shown such barbarity and sadism, that it is an insult to animals to call it animal nature.

The dutch animal protection NGO has a good slogan: protect the animals against the beasts

Expand full comment

There is no such thing as 'real to them', but I get what your pointing to.

Expand full comment

I notice similarities between monkey behavior and our human plight.The way our governance evolved has not eliminated our endocrine system judgments.In Referencing Herod I illustrated an indication, that Herod was a monkey king.

We were still basically monkey.Our average life span was 35. There was nothing to know, anyway no science, no knowledge, nothing to learn, except how to eat.

Some Monkeys take advantage of others. They made up shit.Violence settles all disputes finally.

Monkey is wolf to monkey.

Expand full comment

that it is an insult to animals to call it animal nature.

Monkeys Chimpanzees in nature are brutal.There are still a few isolated primeval Human tribes on Earth.

What blows me away It hasn't been that long since Roman Colleseum.All those monkeys used mixed public open toilets.

monkey brain.

Expand full comment

Starting to.For Aztec quetzalcoatl was realRecent archaeology has suggested quetzalcoatl was most likely a political party.

Like St. Peter.

Humans died for their belief in quetzalcoatl or St Peter.The world that can take your life, - gets quite real, I expect.

That is monkey

To rule through fear and brutality.How does Putin get his men to fight ... They are afraid of something.Ukrainians fight in a different world, and their reality is not a Russian's reality, but they are afraid too.

Expand full comment

Abortion is never even mentioned in the Bible.

Oh, it is, but not as something to avoid, but demanded.The Test for an Unfaithful Wife11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah[c] of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.

16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[d] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”

“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

23 “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial[e] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.

29 “‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, 30 or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. 31 The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’”

The husband is of course never to be blamed if he is a jealous and sosiopathic asshat that sees infidelity at every turn.

Expand full comment

dying for something does not make it real. only demonstrable evidence

Expand full comment

Overturning Roe practically shot every single anti choice Republican in the foot. Heck, it even ended up shooting the pro choice Republicans in the foot because they did next to nothing to stop it from happening.

Expand full comment

The link Robin provides at the end of her essay was shocking (where the anti-choice folks choose abortion because in their circumstances they should have one but no one else should. And even they shouldn't have one, but they choose to have one.)A very good reference which I shall tuck away.

Expand full comment

Again you can believe as much nonsense as you want but that does NOT make it reality!

I mostly agree with you, but you overgeneralise and overextrapolate.

Expand full comment

Let me put it this way then.Before Webb Reality included a Big Bang.now, - it doesn't.

Expand full comment

and the world I grew up in was real.Today it seems, and is unreal.It's Schrodinger's cat.

If you believe in reality, you will take a look.If you find the cat is neither alive, nor dead, then, what would reality be?

but ... that's beside the point and philosophy, - you and I can argue both sides up and down from now to eternity. And the point I want to make is that Human Governance has been very primitive.Monkey brain.Until after Gutenberg invented the printing press.

Expand full comment