The Bible and the Bamboozled

“Too unreflective ever to know himself, too incapable of thought ever to be really a hypocrite, Elmer is honored and beloved of those with whom he comes in contact because he is made of the same coarse clay as they, because no learning, no integrity and no spirituality sets him apart from those to whom he is paid to minister. He is the type most fit to occupy the pulpits supported by materialists like himself to whom the church is half the defender of petty privileges against subversive forces and half the instrument through which a nominal respect may be paid to virtues inconvenient to practice; and to Elmer himself the pulpit is quite as useful as he is to it since … he is enabled not only to taste the intoxication of an orator’s power but to enjoy an income and a position which the mediocrity of his will, the fundamental meanness of his character and the shallowness of his brain could not have earned him by any other means.”

— Joseph Wood Krutch, describing Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry.

And if you ever wondered where in hell the Christians who support Trump came from, here you go. This is the location in hell where they feel right at home.

You Bet, Bob

Fox News: A Vesuvius of Lies

Fifty Shades of Trump

Portrait by Tommervik

Donald Trump is a living index of American society’s most obnoxious qualities: narcissism, racism, sexism, willful ignorance, pervasive dishonesty and self-righteous cruelty.

America likes to think of itself as young and beautiful, like Dorian Gray, but Trump is the picture we had hidden in the attic — now out on display for all the world to see.

Because Republicanism Is Fascism

Riddle me this: If “liberalism is fascism,” as the know-nothing knuckle-draggers claim, then why are ALL the Nazis, Holocaust deniers, white supremacists and pro-Confederacy fetishists on the November ballot — at least a half-dozen of them — running as REPUBLICANS?

Why Your Brain Lies to You

A conceptual sculpture installed at Rong Khun Temple in Chiang Rai, northern Thailand

“So if you ask the question “What kinds of perceptions and thoughts and feelings guide us through life each day?’ the answer, at the most basic level, isn’t ‘The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that give us an accurate picture of reality.’ No, at the MOST basic level, the answer is ‘The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that helped our ancestors get genes into the next generation.’ 

Whether those thoughts and feelings and perceptions give us a true view of reality is, strictly speaking, beside the point. As a result, they sometimes don’t. Our brains are designed to, among other things, delude us.”

— Robert Wright, Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.

Farewell to a Master

Artist Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, was found dead in his New York apartment at age 90.