Trump’s Trolley Kills Five

Well, America … you have murdered the trolley workers. Their blood is now on your hands. Let me be clear; a minority of Americans can rest peacefully, albeit, fearfully. They at least tried to pull the lever. They just couldn’t get enough help from their fellow Americans who “voted their consciences” or didn’t vote at all.

Ok, I get the feeling your face is dressed in confusion. “What the hell trolley is he talking about? Who died?” Let me back up and explain.

The “trolley problem” is a well-known thought experiment in the field of ethics. You remember ethics? They used to be common in the halls of government in this country.  In the trolley problem, you are confronted with a serious dilemma.

A trolley car is out of control and careening down the tracks where five workers don’t see or hear it coming. If nothing is done, the five workers will assuredly die. You see this and happen to be standing by a large lever. If you quickly pull the lever, the trolley will be directed onto another track where you see one worker who will unquestionably be killed. Do you pull the lever to save five lives at the expense of one life?

A Death in the Family

No one’s getting out alive. One of the few constants in the universe is that there is an ultimate end to everything. If we’re to believe all of the philosophical euphemisms surrounding death, we shouldn’t fear it. It comes to all things. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is inescapable. All things are ultimately buried, even if only metaphorically.

When the end comes, whether it be expected or a sudden and shocking event, the process of grieving begins.  People deal with their grief in different ways, some constructive, others not so much. In her landmark book, “On Death and Dying”, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross spoke of what she called the five stages of dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Although she directed her words to those who were dying, the five stages also apply to those forced to grieve the loss of a loved one.

Making Amerika Great One Swastika at a Time

By Aunt Beulah

Aunt Beulah is a former comatose pseudonym who woke from her slumber when the country lobbed a grenade through her nursing home window.

Is it not refreshing to see America and its citizens finally paving The Path to the Moral High Ground? It’s about time we jumped on High Horse and galloped over the Constitution of the United States of America. Just between you and me, I feel the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, not to mention the Declaration of Independence, are pretty lame. After all, the Founding Fathers of this country couldn’t even be bothered to establish a State religion or mention Christianity at all in any of these documents. I’m almost positive that was an oversight, although I can’t be sure as I wasn’t there and there was no Twitter. Perhaps they were sidetracked while separating church from state and couldn’t find their way back to the pew to ask for guidance. Damn Deists. Horrifying Humanists. Sensible Secularists.  What were they thinking by leaving the construal of those documents to the commoners?!

Haunting Voices from the Holocaust

Most of my formative years were spent in a working class, Jewish neighborhood in Detroit. I went to a grade school that was overwhelmingly Jewish. I was immersed in the Jewish culture and knew it as my own. I’m a richer and better person for those experiences.

I vividly recall many discussions of the Holocaust. I can still close my eyes and see the number tattooed on the arm of Beverly Hearn’s mother that bore witness to her experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. I was aghast to see the pictures of the starving prisoners on their liberation day and of the trenches filled with the emaciated corpses that didn’t live to see the end of the war. We were told to never forget the horrors that had been perpetrated just a few years earlier. “It must be remembered so that it never happens again” we were instructed.

There was a very active group of Nazi war criminal hunters as I approached my adolescence. I still remember the publicity and excitement when, in 1960, Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann was captured in Argentina and taken to Israel to stand trial. He was hanged in 1962, but the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, continued to search for more war criminals. That search has continued well into this century.

The Tea Party’s Assault on the 1st Amendment

You really have to love these guys. Well, maybe that’s pushing it a bit. But you have to admit, if they weren’t so inept and dangerous to our nation’s wellbeing, members of the Tea Party would be fun to watch – sort of like a kid with a feather and honey. They’re drawing a lot of attention to themselves with some pretty nonsensical and destructive behavior. The problem is they’re dragging more rational, clear thinking people into the maelstrom they’re creating. Blinded by their anger and deafened by their din, they rail against one cause after another.

The latest bit of pure insanity involves the issue of “net neutrality”. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t fully comprehend the significance of the issue and many don’t care because they believe the issue doesn’t impact them directly. Believe me, it does. It is one of the biggest issues facing our nation today. It threatens to undermine our entire concept of freedom.

The Value of Faith?

A Google quote-of-the-day caught my eye this morning. It amounted to a backhanded slap to the arrogance of humanity. After all, we’re all so damned important or so we think.

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

The Creation Museum – Disneyland Revisited

I unapologetically acknowledge that I am trained as a scientist. My father was an engineer. My grandfather was an engineer. Logic was revered on the alter in the home of my youth. It has long intrigued me that a substantial percentage of Americans reject the concept of Darwinian evolution. At the risk of offending those who fall into that category, what the hell kind of Kool-Aid are you drinking? I can’t see how anyone with a touch of education and a hint of cerebral activity can believe otherwise. I can think of few things in the scientific world that are so incredibly self evident.

Pat Robertson – One Sick S.O.B.

I’ve been a little neglectful of this column recently. Most of my efforts have been going into writing a book about a homeless, mentally ill man who served as a unifying force in a community in California. The book is nearing completion and will hopefully shed light on the plight of the mentally ill in this country. It is a touching and compelling story.

As I write about the difficulties of living with mental illness, I see that being a mentally sick individual doesn’t have to be an automatic condemnation to poverty and discomfort. Look at Pat Robertson, the good Christian who is known to call for the death of his fellow human beings from time to time. As most everyone knows by now, this delusional whack job says the tragedy that has befallen Haiti was brought about by God because Haitians many generations back made “a pact with the devil.”

Oh How Loud Sing the Guilty

Isn’t it funny how so often those most guilty of an offense are the ones that cry foul the loudest when others do the same thing? Case in point, the United Coalition of Reason, a Washington based group that works to raise the visibility of local groups in what it calls “the community of reason.” This community of reason includes a variety of non-theistic organizations including secular humanists, agnostics, atheists, and other non-believers in the realm of the supernatural. Some groups even include Jews and other progressive thinking members of more traditional religious groups.

The United Core of Reason has provided assistance to local Coalition of Reason groups in a variety of American cities to erect billboards and bus signs reaching out to other non-theists to let them know they are not alone and that numerous local groups offer everything from education to social forums for like minded non-believers to get together. The billboard campaign came to Phoenix earlier this year and arrived in San Diego this week. Billboards have also appeared in Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Houston and a host of other cities around the nation.

The billboards proclaim . . .

“Are You Good without God?  Millions are.” or “Don’t Believe in God? You are not alone.”

Afghanistan – Where Fools Rush In

President Obama faces a monumental challenge. What direction will we take in the battle for Afghanistan? You remember Afghanistan; it’s that country where Al Qaeda was training terrorists, where Osama bin Laden lived and where we were focusing our efforts before George W. Bush turned his back on it and went after the guy that “tried to kill [his] daddy”. As experts predicted years ago while we were running around looking for phantom weapons of mass destruction next door, Afghanistan was the real danger point. They said the Taliban and Al Qaeda would be resurgent and that Afghanistan would sooner or later come back to haunt us. It is becoming increasingly obvious they were right about the danger. It is knocking on our door.