What Spencer Tracy and Stanley Kramer’s 1960 INHERIT THE WIND has to say to the current sitting UNSUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES in 2022

 

“Henry Drummond: Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like [abortion rights] and you make it a crime —, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!”

 

I don’t know if you can say it any better than that. Even if you have never watched the movie, go look up just that performance by Spencer Tracy, it is one of the greats. Ostensibly about Evolution, the quote also works well for voter suppression, civil rights, and female contraceptive and abortion rights.

And here’s the thing… I’m not in favor of Abortions. It is too my mind a crushing thing. But here’s the thing it is even more a crushing thing to the woman who needs it. No one is in favor of an Abortion. The Abortion itself is not a pleasant or sought after thing. It is a thing of circumstance and for the one who has to make that choice… necessity.

A man does not want anyone telling him what to do with his guns, yet for some reason they feel women should have less rights over their own body and reproductive choices than men demand for inanimate objects. Unless you are going to raise that fetus into adulthood, and support mother and child comfortably for the duration, you don’t get a say over her private choice.

By the pro-life argument, applied to men, women should have the right to tell you what to do with your sperm. Why stop with the fertilized egg having rights that trump the host? Why not also grant the sperm rights that trump the host? Taken to that standard — masturbation or sex for any reason outside of procreation should be considered as much a crime as abortion. If pro-lifers had to apply their nonsensical extremist standard to men that they apply to women, I guarantee you the pro-life movement would find itself quickly and drastically devoid of supporters.

I’m being a little facetious here but you get my point.

 

 

 

And here 62 years removed from INHERIT THE WIND, from the enlightenment that gave us that courageous movie and that courageous speech, we find the grand children of that enlightened age…  marching backward. Buoyed by the not yet dead relics and slaves of a much romanticized “never was” antebellum glory, and the dream of Reich… that in reality— was never more than a nightmare.

Living out the fractured dreams of men who had their chance and squandered it, and want the young to go backward into their follies and their lament. Old fools leading young fools… into the Holocaust.

What a waste of energy and lives and potential.

Here in an age of science fiction and possibilities, to be led by Dinosaurs into regression and cannibalism and witch-hunts… to go crawling backwards as a nation and a species… when so many have given and sacrificed so much… for the rights you would let the vermin of an atrophied age… defecate on.

I think we should not allow that.

I think we should fight.

 

I think The Supreme Court, The Trumps, The Nazis, The KKK, The loss of Journalism and Newspapers, The usurping of media Mass and Social by the interests of elitism and hate, the proponents of the rights of gun manufacturers and corporations…. I think we should fight them all.

And by fits and starts… drive them into the sea.

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Like, comment, subscribe, but most of all… think. In an age where so few do, …think, ponder, ruminate, and with a clear and focused mind—- say ‘this far, no further’.

May God, whichever God you bend your knee to… Keep you, and preserve you, and strengthen you, not to in all things be right (that is the stance of the zealot and the enemy) but rather the empathy to draw a line, between right and wrong…. and the conviction and the strength to hold and fight for that line.

 

Viewing the Present through the Past

I’m in the mood to rant. Those of you who’ve been with me a while know I do that from time to time. Some of you, the more insane, even love me for it. A few of you pat me on my head, and abide me my rants.

For those in the mood, not to love or to abide, then I would say…. run.

Come back tomorrow, the fit of truth will have passed, and I will be a cuddly clown again, cooing and capering for pleasures… cloying.

But right now, like Lovecraft’s mad apocryphal Arab, Abdul Alhazred, the fit is on me. Sometimes the blood seeps into my eyeballs, the blood of all those we are killing… and it is either speak or die.

So the words will have their say….

Everyday

Everyday I wake up, I ask myself if I’m on the side of the angels

Every single day.

I don’t take it for granted I am.

On the side of the angels I mean.

Most people take it for granted, that they were right yesterday, and will be right today and tomorrow. Particularly Americans. Americans are always so sure that they are right, adamant of their right before they do something so glaringly wrong. No nationality in the history of the world has ever been so documented in their lies not just against other nations, but lies against their own citizens. America has repeatedly and consistently been wrong about yesterday, yet continues to follow the same wrong path through ever more bloody todays and tomorrows.

As if true choice, and true change were concepts America steered away from long ago, and no longer even sees.

I don’t take it for granted that in the night, the causes I love have not been invaded by the causes I loathe, And the things I adore, have not been replaced by what I despise

That is the nature of evil

It sheds its skin

It is ever changing, ever moving

And you must be on guard

Ever on guard

And guided not by stagnant allegiances

But by the fruit of your present tree. That is the constant question you must challenge everyone and everything with. What are your actions sowing? If they are things you fear to show, and fear to acknowledge, then your fruit is rotten, and your tree withered.

And the only sane thing to do, is to cut down the old… and to plant a new tree.

But god… are we fond of the old.

I think of that generation that stood around when Christianity called burning people righteous.

I think of that generation that stood around when Christianity called slavery holy.

I think of that generation that stood around when Christianity called Jews an abomination.

I think of that generation that stood around when Christianity cheered killing Arabs to save them.

And of that generation, that is ever changing and always unchanged, I would say simply

If people die at the end of the day… perhaps it be not Christianity, but something else.

Something that wears the skin of righteousness but not the heart.

Perhaps Rome never relinquished herself to Daniel’s Christians

Perhaps Rome, the idealogical not the geographical, survived

The only way evil ever does endure

by hiding

by changing

by subverting

Like klansmen and scorned ex- slaveholders invading Lincoln’s party post the Reconstruction,

Making of the Republican party

Making of the Party of Tolerance and Abolition

That which it was not.

A party of bigotry and landholders (that is not an insult, that is history and verifiable fact in the wake of the reconstruction)

Perhaps in this same way Rome, the religion of Rome

Rome, the ancient

Survives under the guise of the religion it hated

Even to the naming of the days of the week

And not keeping the Sabbath

So Be ever mindful Christian soldiers

Marching as to war

That you have been

led astray
bamboozled
hoodwinked

And be wary
lest the cause you fight for my Christian Brothers
is the one you should be armed against

THE SEARCH ENGINE WARS!? Google vs. Scroogle!??

“There above the dead man’s torn body, man fought with demon under the pale light of the rising moon, with all the advantages with the demon, save one. And that one was enough to overcome all the others. For if abstract hate may bring into material substance a ghostly thing, may not courage, equally abstract, form a concrete weapon to combat that ghost”

—from SKULLS IN THE STARS by Robert E. Howard

One of the best search engines, and my search engine of choice Scroogle.org, and the one I’ve been recommending to people for years, has finally closed up shop.

Scroogle News Story

Owned by privacy advocate Daniel Brandt, Scroogle offered search results gleaned from Google, but minus that site’s cookies and tracking features. So Scroogle more correctly was a search engine plug-in or cleaner; acting as a buffer between Google and the end user. Almost like a proxy.

Google was never happy with Scroogle. And almost from the first the non-profit Scroogle was subject to a variety of questionable harrasment style incidents. From someone buying up Scroogle.com and turning it into a porno site, so heaven help the unwary person looking for the Scroogle search engine, and forgetting to add the Org.

Of late the cold war between Google and Scroogle has escalated into a hot dispute, with Google actively barring traffic for extended periods of time to any of Brandt’s Scroogle servers. Necessitating frequent messages to users that ‘search results are not available and try again in 10 minutes’.

However the final straw came with concentrated, and very proficient denial of service attacks effectively shutting down Brandts Scroogle.org site. After days of fighting Brandt has officially announced he is closing down Scroogle.org and all his related sites and servers.

It’s a devastating blow to privacy advocates everywhere, as Brandt was also responsible for other sites such as Wikipedia Watch.

And the first argument I oft here from the uninitiated is “it’s Google’s info, they should be able to block who they want”. But that’s the rub, the info does not belong to Google, much like Scroogle they are middlemen redistributing other peoples’ site links and info. Scroogle had as much right to re-disseminate that info, as did Google.

But the larger question I have is why would hackers, an anti-big business, pro personal-privacy, bunch… attack the non-profit Scroogle. The simple answer is… they wouldn’t, they would attack Google rather than Scroogle… unless (like the speculated reasons behind Linux open-source attacks) they were hired to attack Scroogle.

Do I think someone paid to setup the pornographic domain Scroogle.com to scare people away from adopting or visiting Scroogle.org? Let’s put it this way, now that Brandt’s Scroogle.org has closed up shop, the pornographic Scroogle.com has also closed up shop.

Do I think someone hired hackers, to commit a crime by performing a DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attack on Scroogle? In effect attacking and shutting down a non-profit company.

Well it happened, so yes I do think it was paid for and premeditated.

And who do I think was behind driving Brandt’s Scroogle.org out of business? The same people you think.

It sends a troubling message across the board and one that will have to be addressed by all of us sooner rather than later. These bullies can’t keep taking our collective lunch money. 🙂 .

In the interim here are a couple quick search engine alternatives to the now departed Scroogle.org. The best way I can see to honor Scroogle’s passing is by having even more people avoid using Google.

Scroogle.org may be dead, but its message seems to have spread to many Google alternatives.

The search engines are:

DUCK DUCK GO– Award winning search engine, it’s quick and easy to use but its results aren’t as accurate as Google’s results. Takes a bit more searching, but I personally don’t mind. Plus that Duck is just sooo CUTE! (Did I say that out loud? Doh!)

YIPPY– My backup search engine is Yippy.com, formerly called Clusty.com. Works great and is as accurate as Google.

A few others are:

IXQUICK

STARTPAGE

Both of the above are owned by the same Dutch company and I’m still testing them, so the jury is out, but so far so good.

Pages helpful in researching this article were the following:

Scroogle demise News Story written by Kelly Fiveash

and

Search engine alternatives by Chetan Pinto

Well that's all for now folks. Come back tomorrow for more news you can use! 🙂 .

“Kane fought with his arms and his feet and his hands, and he was aware at last that the ghost began to give back before him, that the fearful laughter changed to screams of baffled fury. For man’s only weapon is courage that flinches not from the Gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.”
—from SKULLS IN THE STARS by Robert E. Howard