Sarah Palin: unevolved

@Alan: okay, i’ve looked into this, at least perfunctorily, and have concluded that it really doesn’t matter because it’s just a bunch of rich, powerful men at sleepaway camp acting like children out of Lord of the Flies and pretending to engage in “mysterious” ritual anyway. It is embarrassingly ridiculous, but it happens, and it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

@Alan:
It’s silly to think of an idiotic men’s retreat as satanic. Sure, they may perform weird rituals, but does anyone really believe that dumb rituals do any harm? Anyway, there’s quite a misconception of satanism in the public mind. Personally, i don’t go in for such stuff, but i’ve known people who do, and they tend to be annoyed by these erroneous perceptions. Apparently, it has little or nothing to do with “the devil” per se (except perhaps symbolically), but instead emphasizes the self. Empowering, maybe, but silly all the same. Still, at least i can appreciate the anarchic aspect. But i digress…

I just don’t think that grown men acting like teenagers sitting around an ooky-spooky Ouija board are much of a threat purely on the basis of the dumb-ass “pretend” play they do there. On the other hand, i’m sure there are probably the odd secret deals hatched here and there. But is that something new? No, authority will always gather in dark places like rats and cockroaches. They need to, because they’d have no power if the people could see them out in the open, with no clothes on.

There are real conspiracies, but they are, almost without exception, obvious. That’s usually the best way to hide something. The real Illuminati are the people themselves, falling for the same old shell games, over and over again. The ultimate irony – the unilluminated Illuminatuses.

I do concur, though, regarding the fascism statement. Wholeheartedly. And i mistrust authority and corporations, but only on the basis that they hold too much power over the people. It matters not to me how they operate, only that they do not serve humanity in general.

Ok, let’s just say for the sake of argument that this really was a satanic ritual.

I guess the obvious question here would be: who cares?

I mean, it’s not like Satan is any more real than Zeus or Mazda or Mithra or Mothra or any other old mythological figure. It’s not like this is anything more than grown men (with retarded senses of reality) playing silly boogieman games with flashlights in the backyard.

Blind belief is a stupid and dangerous thing, my friend. It is stupid of anyone to wear dumb robes and pretend to call on spirits, just as it is stupid of observers to think that anything supernatural is actually going on. That rapping you hear is simply the medium herself knocking on the underside of the table with her foot.

Far more insidious is the secret deal-making here, and i don’t think it’s any worse than the secret deal-making in Parliament, or in Washington D.C. or anywhere else where powerful figures meet to decide the fate of the world.

@Alan:

1) What exactly does Satan, or satanism, have to do with homosexuality? (note spelling) Or, for that matter, torture, child sexual abuse, or murder? Or is everything that is foreign to you assumed to be pure evil?
2) What exactly is problematic about homosexuality?
3) How does being American equate to being dehumanized? I guess that begs the question: are Australians morally superior somehow?

As to your last query, those Americans who allow the wholesale slaughter of Iraqis are religious zealots with no tolerance of people with other faiths – something which, in this thread anyway, smells familiar.

I am not a Family Guy writer. I try not to watch the show. I even hate it, most of the time. But i’ll defend their right to make jokes about Death fucking a dead chick any day. Fucked up? Sure. Terribly fucked up. Funny? Not really. Free speech? You betcha. Cartoon depiction of a blatantly unreal situation which could not possibly be confused with reality by anyone with more than seven brain cells? Also, yes.

I’m not saying the world isn’t full of evil people who want to fuck us for their own nefarious ends. It is. The world is overflowing with jerks like that. I’m not saying i don’t have a problem with them making plans to keep us all under their thumbs under surveillance-based police states. I take great exception to that. But do i care what these people do when they have a sleepover and tell ghost stories to each other? Not particularly. Not any more than i care what they do anywhere else – which, depending on what they’re doing i just may care a great deal about anyway… i.e. if they’re doing things that actually DO affect the rest of us (stupid sleepaway camp parlor tricks involving ghosts and goblins don’t count). That’s like saying that they’re all evil because they went to a Metallica concert.

And anyone who seriously thinks that occultists kill people and molest kids has been drinking the conservative Kool-Aid. Sure, some of them talk about doing those things, but those are almost always code words for other, dumber rituals they’re too embarrassed to admit to. There are no more murderers or pedophiles involved with the occult than there are in the general population – in other words, the ratio of dangerous lunatics is about the same as it is in any other group of people. Those crazies, like all the others, have misunderstood the common-sense rules of acceptable behavior in civil society. And like the outside world, sometimes they band together under some counterfeit flag they fail to comprehend.

And before you or anyone else asks: no, i’m not an occultist. I just took an interest in the subject a long time ago and have many friends who are active in some form or other. Personally, i think it’s just as stupid and worthless as Christianity or any other form of organized superstition. (Though i did learn one Very Important Truth About Life and “Magic/k” while studying it – which i’m pretty sure a vast number of occultists completely fail to catch on to.) And, here in the United States, i am pretty squarely in the minority of atheistic agnostics.