When you’ve been in a bad way, have others come to your aid? You have a small financial problem and of course your friends rally around to raise $1,000 to pay off that bill. No? Me either.I was out of work for over a year one time and my friends from church would offer to “pray for me”. that “god” would find the path for me (a job). I was even still tithing through my unemployment because I really believed “god” would be at my aid if I just followed faithfully., Silence. Not only from “god” but my fellow congregants, some of which had ties into the community that could’ve securied me a job to help pay my bills. Although many invited me over to after-church dinner, none would offer to recommend me for the most basic of positions.But then, as I discovered, I wasn’t part of the “inner circle” where the business of religion actually took place. By then I was already in doubt about my faith. This was just one more nail in it;s ancient coffin. Religion, I determined, was a business, with certain people on the inside that reaped the rewards that the remainder of us paid for, One more of many straws that over time, nade me consider non-belief as it really looked to me that there was nothing to believe in at all.

If you don’t believe, why not just say so? Sure, as I’ve mentioned, there are countries that will sentence a person to death for being an atheist and sure, there are some social downsides here in America (far from the death penalty) but does anyone really want to hang out with folks that refuse to allow their “friends” to have their own system of belief, or in this case, non-belief? Some protestant sects don’t believe Roman Catholics are truly Christian. Let’s not forget Sunni and Shiite Muslims. These are still at war with each other. Yemen, anyone? Lebanon, particularly Beirut, became a killing field between Christians and Muslims beginning in the early 1980’s. Before that, Beirut was known as the “Paris of the Middle East”. It became rubble. How many people have died for a belief and yet these same theocrats want to also kill those that refuse to either believe, or convert? Religious belief causes nothing but misery for the populations under it;s control and should be relegated to it’s ancient grave where they all began. With graves of the people that just wanted to live in peace.

Anyone that hasn’t been in a coma the last 3 years know that the media have done all they can to protect first, the Biden candidacy and then, to protect his presidency. Of course, as hard as they tried, they couldn’t hide his blunders like Afghanistan, or even his anti-fossil fuel stance as the price of gasoline rose to $5 a gallon. Every gaffe, even his infamous “red speech” (which I refer to as his Nuremberg speech), which shocked the nation as a whole, received. little critical commentary from his sycophants, the media. This past summer, there was hope for the media in the Dobbs decision, which nullified Roe v Wade. The media made hay as much as possible, attempting to blame Republicans for the dismay of their pro-choice friends but as hard as they pushed the issue, it never overcame the 800 pound Gorilla: inflation, and his little brother: crime. In some constituencies, there were actually 2 800 pound Gorillas. That’s how bad crime has become. As the mid-terms have approached, it;s become clear to the media that they cannot hide Biden from himself or his policies and even though it seems to just be whispers now, the grumbling among the fourth estate resembles tremors that my occur just before the big one. And that big one will bw on November 8. How will the media respond to not just a red wave, but an actual Tsunami that is now predicted from various statistical analyses tht seem to indicate a larger number of Republican victories in the House than originally thought possible. Some of these in what were once “safe” districts. The Senate looks better as well. Two surveys indicate a possible 53-47 majority for the Republicans. So what’s a media that has been orotecting this president for the last 3 years to do? Well, they’ll immediately throw him under the bus as soon as they stop crying about a “rigged election”. After November, pay attention to how little the media will make effort to protect and hide Biden from himself. Oh, there will be some that will try to make excuse, but those voices will be few and hard to hear over the calls for Joe to Go.

Are we still, as a species, a society (societies?), stuck in the miasma of our ancestors, where people were actually put to death simply because they questioned not only the potency, but the very existence of the gods of that age in which the lived. Atheism has existed in society forever, and only in recent decades has non-belief in any form of the supernatural become moderately accepted with our peers. There are still countries where it is illegal to be an atheist and the punishment for non-believers in those countries is death. How awful, everyone thinks but no one considers how they, individually, react to the fact of an atheist in their midst. Shunning? How about being first on the list for being laid off work and last to be recalled, if ever. And these aren’t the most ardent of believers, just those that claim belief and maybe show up to a gathering of believers during some high holy days. They are mostly ignorant about what they claim to believe but that’s okay, because of the word, belief.

Conservatives are familiar being deplatformed on social media. How many have been banned on youTube and/or Instagram as well as Twitter or Facebook? Then there’s the platforms that offer a way to pay for content that do even more damage to creators by denying paymentd thst mny of these depend on as these channels are their income. Once you can’t get paid, then you’re essentially finished no matter if YouTube or whoever allows the contact back on their platform. People have been known to make some awful statement and maybe they do deserve a slap on the wrist for being outrageous, even offensive. But to completely cancel them? That’s wrong. I may not like something a person says. I may consider it sexist or racist, but that shouldn’t allow me to have that person silenced. What it should do is spur those that disagree to more conversation. Piling on, mobbing, cancelling, does nothing to solve what may be a problem of education with some people.Let’s stop the outrage machine and fire up the reason engine. We might have a lot better outcome if we did.