Why we are doomed

I may start this entry and leave "Gay people, my role in their persecution" for another time.

Anyway, three pm, trying to kick myself back into normal sleep patterns. Don't expect prose. And nights went reasonably well, certainly from a 'number of people who died per hour' point of view, because everyone did really really well.

Since starting at the drugs and alcohol job I have noticed I'm "seeing" a lot more people with drugs and alcohol issues, things I think I could have missed. Sometimes it's not that obvious - the fifty year old woman with her eighth admission this year with airways disease who has small, soft bruises on the inside of her elbow. Of course, her drug "issue" isn't the speed, it's the cigarettes that are killing her, but that's different -they are legal.

But in the case of 'twenty eight year old man, fixing television antenna at five oclock in the morning, then leapt from roof to ground' and completely graunched his ankle, you don't even need to ask. But if you did ask, it was amphetamines, not alcohol. A salient lesson for all those who preach you've just got to believe in yourself, because he did, but physics and biology didn't. Gravity - it's not just a good idea, it's the law. And what the hell is on at five in the morning that's so damn important?

Anyway. I learnt something I didn't know the other day, about Hurricane Katrina. Look at this, gleaned from an email some anti-choice mob (Columbia Christians for Life) has apparently** been distributing:

http://liberalserving.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/katrinafetus.gif

"The image of the hurricane above with its eye already ashore at 12:32 PM Monday, August 29 looks like a fetus (unborn human baby) facing to the left (west) in the womb, in the early weeks of gestation (approx. 6 weeks). Even the orange color of the image is reminiscent of a commonly used pro-life picture of early prenatal development (see sign with picture of 8-week pre-born human child below). In this picture, and in another picture in today's on-line edition of USA Today*, this hurricane looks like an unborn human child.

Louisiana has 10 child-murder-by-abortion centers - FIVE are in New Orleans
www.ldi.org ('Find an Abortion Clinic [sic]')

Baby-murder state # 1 - California (125 abortion centers) - land of earthquakes, forest fires, and mudslides
Baby-murder state # 2 - New York (78 abortion centers) - 9-11 Ground Zero
Baby-murder state # 3 - Florida (73 abortion centers) - Hurricanes Bonnie, Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne in 2004; and now, Hurricane Katrina in 2005

God's message: REPENT AMERICA !"

I will leave aside the "it's not orange, hurricanes aren't orange you evilly stupid fuck... look at the photographs of actual people looking at the actual sky during the actual storm - are those photos orange? are storms usually frickin' orange on your planet??? With purple around the outside????" for now.

And notice the assumption it's a human fetus (actually, technically it's an embryo)? Looks pretty much like a chicken fetus to me. God's will has suddenly become Very Clear to me, excuse me while I go out and shoot the owner of the local KFC - or should I say "murder by rotisserie" clinic.

But you know, you read this and you wonder how anybody manages to write satire any more. How do you take the piss out of a culture that consistently and reliably beats you to the punch? How can you say anything illustrating the poisons in the heart of Bush's Christian America when they do something like this, revelling in teh stuff you'd normally try and shame someone with? How can you expose contradictions between "decent human behaviour" and "what people like this do", when they already put stuff like this out and willingly put their name to it?

You know, years ago, I had very strong left wing opinions - ideas on the environment, war, taxation, international politics, that kind of thing. I use the term "left wing" with caution, because some people seem to believe this means Gulags and the like. To be honest, I am and was more a small-scale leftie, Gramsci and Chomsky rather than Marx and Lenin, more No Logo and Pip Pip than Das Kapital. More thinking that capitalism is not always the answer than thinking communism is ever the answer. Most of what my right-wing friends think of as leftie is stuff no one really believes in anymore.

To me, and I am aware that nothing is more boring than listening to anyone else witter on about politics, the left wing thing is a philosophical thing. It's more about dissent, it's more about saying things could be better. It's more about saying things could be different, and better.

Years and years ago, I did Italian at high school. My interest in Italian was not fostered by any appreciation of the language or its people, its great achievements in numerous fields of art or science. My interest was entirely due to Ms Bianco, a peroxide blonde in what I remember as a white, mid-riffy teeshirt and jeans, with over-inflated lips, who smiled and pouted to a group of thirty frenzied just-adolescent males, and the three depressed and dispirited girls in the class who actually wanted to learn another language.

Out of a year of Italian I remembered* eight obscenities and one phrase:

'Une altro mondo e possibile'

Another world is possible.

That's what left wing is to me.

Anyway, I retain a lot of the ideas, and I know I will go to my grave having only ever voted one way, but one thing I don't retain is the hope in the perfectable man, the socialist ideal. One biologist said about socialism "Right idea, wrong species", and that's pretty much got it right.

Because you read stuff like that and you think, God, we're not really such a class act, are we? We hear about loving each other and forgiving each other and giving all we have to the poor, and we turn it into ferocious fetuses in the sky. Forty five years ago we got to the moon, now we're disputing whether science should be taught in the science class. Jesus. Again, evolution is not just a good idea, it's the law. What next - we ditch nuclear physics and the sun shines because of intelligent shining?

Anyway, tired and rambling and doubtless boring even myself. Will try and write sensibly tonight.

John
*Probably inaccurately

** or so I hear. It may turn out this is all crap, and that Columbian Christians for Life (or more accuratley, Columbian Christians for a God who Kills Thousands) is a completely innocent and not-crazy group of people. I stress I haven't even seen the original email, and itf this is all wrong, my apologies.

John