No More Religious People In Government – No More Delusional Leaders
Posted Humanity, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion, Society on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008. Comments(2)

The Religious Should Not And Cannot Be Trusted In Positions of Power.

Religion is a mass delusion that has been perpetrated far too long out of fear, ignorance, and power. I understand that people have been raised (brainwashed) that way (me included), but what continues to shock me is that in this day and age, with all we know about how the universe works, people continue to choose to live outside of reality.

Not only is that sad, it’s scary and downright dangerous. Witness the havoc these delusions cause…All the way from the 2,000 years of christian, jewish, muslim, hindu hatred and wars with each other to the parents who withhold medical treatment from their children because they believe that praying to god will cure all. I don’t want to belabor the point—I could give examples of this for another 10 pages.

The ignorance of humans never ceases to amaze me, but I’m especially shocked that this right-wing-religious-nut-Sarah-Palin seems to be so well received. I won’t even go into the effects of cult of personality, or the cult of a semi-not-ugly-face have on people. That’s scary in itself.

Look, normally anyone who says they hear voices is rushed off to psychiatric care and rightfully so. They’d certainly not be trusted to hold public office. BUT if they say the voices are from "god" then it’s like "Oh OK that’s cool…you’re not insane." These people should be getting the psychiatric help they need, not encouraged and allowed to continue in their delusions.

I guarantee a person who admitted being bi-polar or schizophrenic would not even be considered for public office; but here we go again with Sara Palin since people obviously didn’t learn their lesson from 8 years of a president with definite mental issues. I’m not just talking about him being unintelligent, I’m talking about issues resembling paranoid delusions, megalomania, schizophrenia, or personality disorders.

He definitely doesn’t shy away from talking about the voices in his head; but here once again another person needing psychiatric care is given a free pass because the voices are from "god". Freaking scary and directly parallel to such wackos as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the Ayatollah Khomeini, et al.

[ I don’t mean to imply that everyone who professes to "hear god’s voice" is psychotic. Most are just deluding themselves because they "want to believe" and this is a way for them to "prove" that god exists and is looking out for them. It’s really just the inner voice and self-talk that all humans possess and is part of a human brain’s normal activity.]

I don’t want to go off on Bush’s mental problems too much, but this is an excellent article on them.

http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/011305PaulLevy.shtml

A couple of quotes from the article….

The author quotes Jung in analyzing George Bush’s mental disorders:

"Hysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to shirk the duty of confronting themselves. They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists."

The Author:

"At the root of Bush’s process is an unwillingness and seeming inability to experience his own sense of sin, guilt and shame, as if he is afraid of being exposed, of being found out. He’s clearly unable to feel any remorse and experience his own weakness and vulnerability, his own sense of failure. This threatens his narcissism too much. One aspect of Bush’s pathology is ‘malignant narcissism,’ as he reacts sadistically to others who mirror back his guilt and don’t support and enable his narcissism."

AND

"Whereas Hitler’s evil was more overt in its cruelty and sadism, Bush’s dark side is much more hidden and disguised, which makes it particularly dangerous. People who voted for Bush are somehow blind to what is very obvious to others. It’s as if they’ve become hypnotized and fallen under the spell that Bush is casting. Why would people vote for someone stricken with malignant egophrenia? People who support Bush are suggestible and susceptible to the same malady that Bush is embodying, as if they have a predisposition for it (based on their own trauma, dissociated psyche and tendency to project the shadow). Supporting Bush is a sign that a person not only doesn’t see the deadly illness that is incarnating itself through Bush, but is an expression that this disease has taken up residence in their being and is using them to do its bidding."

That’s about as perfectly as it can be said.

I personally can no longer in good conscious just let these religious delusions continue unchallenged; especially when we’re faced with another [vice] presidential term of people who admittedly hear voices in their head and make decisions based on a 2,000 year old book written by bronze-age storytellers.

Most Americans can plainly see the evil that comes from the muslim world trying to enforce their barbaric, 8th century mythology on the rest of the world. Yet sadly [religious] Americans seem blind to the fact that THEIR stated ultimate goal and worldview is the exact same thing. But I suppose that’s inherent in the religious person’s psyche…to kill or convert the infidels. Again another false and needless problem caused by people making life-threatening decisions based on 2,000 year old mythology.

We as a country and as a world cannot continue to let people who hear voices in their head and who are so disconnected from reality that they believe magic sky-faeries rule the universe…we should not and we can not any longer let these obviously unfit people rule the United States and the world.

We need to call a spade a spade and not give people who are obviously disconnected from the real world a pass just because they pull the "religious card". Let us at least call it what it truly is…a delusion. And delusional people have no business making decisions for society.

HOPE
Posted American Dream, Economics, Environment, Healthcare, Humanity, Philosophy, Politics, Society on Friday, June 13th, 2008. Comments(2)

Healthcare – Has the tide finally shifted?
Posted American Dream, Business, Economics, Healthcare, Humanity, Politics on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008. Comments(0)

Since healthcare is the #1 cause of bankruptcy in the US, you’d think it would have been more of a forefront issue over the years —especially for those right-wing-types who seem to live by the rule that money is all that matters. Healthcare has been on the minds of Americans for the past few years but it’s been one of those political "third-rails" so politicians have been largely scared to touch it. (Remember how Hillary was crucified a few years ago for her "socialist" health care plan.)

The tide seems to have shifted and it seems that people are finally starting to demand that this healthcare mess be solved. Just so you know where I stand, I don’t think that healthcare should be a for-profit enterprise. When Humana et al came in and started running healthcare as a business with only the bottom-line as the goal, healthcare began a monumental shift to taking care of Wall Street instead of taking care of people.

As a sign that things are indeed shifting, one of the most powerful lobyist groups has taken on the issue. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has created a website called DividedWeFail.org where they take on the issues and the politicians. You can sign petitions, tell your congress people how you feel, and get involved in other ways if you’re interested.

The org is non-partisan as their logo illustrates:

Check it out. Make your voice heard.

 As an aside – I just heard John McCain unveil his healthcare plan today. In short, it’s a whole lot of nothing. A whole lot of business-as-usual. I’m not so sure about Barak and Hillary’s plans either, but their proposals are still a hell of a lot better than what we’ve got now.
John McCain’s healthcare plan
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Barack Obama’s healthcare plan
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Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan
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Regardless of your political persuasion, I hope that we can all agress that the current healthcare system has to change. Healthcare costs are rising at twice the rate of inflation and have been for years, meanwhile the health of the US citizen as a whole has been greatly degraded.

The US has the worlds most expensive healthcare system and yet our system is rated #37 in the world by the world health organization (WHO).

Here’s a report from the university of Maine about the sorry state of the US healthcare system. It’s from 2001 and you know things have only gotten worse. It again outlines that we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world (by far) but also interesting nuggets such as the US ranking #26 for infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. (That’s 26 from the top).

To sum it all up—the US healthcare system sucks for everyone except the insurance companies and drug manufacturers and the politicians they pay off. It’s time for a change. DEMAND IT!

If ever you’re feeling like you have a hard life
Posted Humanity on Monday, April 14th, 2008. Comments(0)

Don’t complain about how hard your life is.

Tree man ‘who grew roots’ hopes to marry after 4lb of warts removed