Inside the heads of the Republican base

Apparently, one of the biggest worries among the Republican base is that Democratic programs are designed to foster dependence on government which will guarantee a Democratic majority in the future.

I find this interesting coming from the party that has been bragging about their strategy to create a permanent majority for the Republicans.

And when I die...

I do not plan to die soon, but one never knows.  I have mentioned a funeral I have been to of a skeptic, whose wife had not one, but two religious groups participating.  That, of course, was between the husband and the wife, and I think, had he been conscious of his own funeral, he might have shrugged and rolled his eyes, but understood.  He loved his wife, after all.

I know of another funeral of an atheist, that I did not attend, at which a friend, a writer of some popularity these days on matters Christian and spiritual, made a rather showy speech, which was more about herself and her beliefs than it was about the departed.  The grieving family were not comforted.

When I die, if I get a funeral, in keeping with my view that the Bible is merely one book among many, I would like texts from other books read instead.

At the risk of quoting a passage longer than constitutes "fair use," I give you Lucretius, from On the Nature of the Universe:

"Now it is all over.  Now the happy home and the best of wives will welcome you no more, nor delightful children rush to snatch the first kiss at your coming and touch your heart with speechless joy.  No chance now to further your fortune or safeguard your family.  Unhappy man," they cry, "unhappily cheated by one treacherous day out of all the blessings of life!"  But they do not go on to say: "And now no repining for these lost joys will oppress you any more."  If they perceived this clearly with their minds and acted according to the words, they would free their breasts from a great load of grief and dread.

"Ah yes!  You are at peace now in the sleep of death, and so you will stay till the end of time.  Pain and sorrow will never touch you again.  But to us, who stood weeping inconsolably while you were consumed to ashes on the dreadful pyre--to us no day will come that will lift the undying sorrow from our hearts."  Ask the speaker, then, what is so heart-rending about this.  If something returns to sleep and peace, what reason is that for pining in inconsolable grief?

Here again, is the way men often talk from the bottom of their hearts when they recline at a banquet, goblet in hand and brows decked with garlands: "How all too short are these good times that come to us poor creatures!  Soon they will be past and gone, and there will be no recalling them."  You would think the crowning calamity in store for them after death was to be parched and shriveled by a tormenting thirst or oppressed by some other vain desire.  But even in sleep, when mind and body alike are at rest, no one misses himself or sighs for life.  If such sleep were prolonged to eternity, no longing for ourselves would trouble us.  And yet the vital atoms in our limbs cannot be far removed from their sensory motions at a time when a mere jolt out of sleep enables a man to pull himself together.  Death, therefore, must be regarded, so far as we are concerned, as having much less existence than sleep, if anything can have less existence than what we perceive to be nothing.  For death is followed by a far greater dispersal of the seething mass of matter: once that icy break in life has intervened, there is no more waking.

Suppose that Nature herself were suddenly to find a voice and round upon one of us in these terms:  "What is your grievance, mortal, that you give yourself up to this whining and repining?  Why do you weep and wail over death?  If the life you have lived till now has been a pleasant thing--if all its blessings have not leaked away like water poured into a cracked pot and run to waste unrelished--why then, you stupid man, do you not retire like a dinner guest who has eaten his fill of life, and take your carefree rest with a quiet mind?  Or, if all your gains have been poured profitless away and life has grown distasteful, why do you seek to swell the total?  The new can but turn out as badly as the old and perish as unprofitably.  Why not rather make an end of life and trouble?  Do you expect me to invent some new contrivance for your pleasure?  I tell you, there is none.  All things are always the same.  If your body is not yet withered with age, nor your limbs decrepit and flagging, even so there is nothing new to look forward to--not though you should outlive all living creatures, or even though you should never die at all."  What are we to answer, except that Nature's rebuttal is justified and the plea she puts forward is a true one?

But suppose it is some man of riper years who complains--some dismal greybeard who laments over his approaching end far more than he ought.  Would she not have every right to protest more vehemently and repulse him in stern tones:  "Away with your tears, old reprobate!  Have done with your grumbling!  You are withering now after tasting all the joys of life.  But because you are always pining for what is not and unappreciative of the things at hand, your life has slipped away unfulfilled and unprized.  Death has stolen upon you unawares, before you are ready to retire from life's banquet filled and satisfied.  Come now, put away all that is unbecoming to your years and compose your mind to make way for others.  You have no choice."  I cannot question but that she would have right on her side; her censure and rebuke would be well merited.  The old is always thrust aside to make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the wreck of others.  There is no murky pit of Tartarus awaiting anyone.  There is need of matter, so that later generations may arise; when they have lived out their span, they will all follow you.  Bygone generations have taken your road, and those to come will take it no less.  So one thing will never cease to spring from another.  To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.  Look back at the eternity that passed before you were born, and mark how utterly it counts to us as nothing.  This is a mirror that Nature holds up to us, in which we may see the time that shall be after we are dead.  Is there anything terrifying in the sight--anything depressing--anything that is not more restful than the soundest sleep?

(Translated by R.E. Latham.  Penguin Classics.)

 

 

The Shutdown: Plain as the nose on your face.

Plain as the nose on your face; that's how my mother used to put it.

And yet, I feel I need to reiterate what the shutdown is all about.

1.  The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) passed both houses of Congress, and was signed by the President; it is therefore the law.

2.  The law has already been tested by the Supreme Court, and found to be Constitutional.

3.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by their Tea Party wing, do not want Obamacare to be implemented.

4.  Instead of using democratic methods to try to repeal a law, the Republicans in the House of Representatives have shut down the government by sending the Senate a budget tied to a delay of implementation of Obamacare.

Now, in my opinion, what the House Republicans are doing ought to be illegal, but I guess it isn't.  It really amounts to extortion.

As for people who are claiming that there is "plenty of blame to go around" and that "both sides are refusing to negotiate," they seem to be ignoring the obviously outrageous behavior of the House Republicans.