​Bigotry and Heat

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Will the human species destroy ourselves with bigotry and heat?

The most inspiring of our leaders in the last century was Prime Minister Winston Churchill of England at the beginning of World War II when he declared: “Never give in — Never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” He also was smart enough to recognize “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”

The greatest scientific and civic mind in the 20th century belonged to Albert Einstein who stated, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.”

Rick Wilson is a Republican Party strategist who wrote about “the worst president of the United States ever” in a book titled “Everything Trump Touches Dies.”

“Some nights when the earth is quiet but your mind is racing, you check Twitter (X) to see if Donald Trump has started a nuclear war. It’s because you’re struggling, like the vast majority of Americans, with the fact that our terrible sloppy, shambling president may just be insane. Not ‘Haha, he’s so crazy’ or ‘He’s pretending to be crazy, but it’s actually 87-quantum chess’ crazy, but legitimately clinically insane. I’d have to look up the DSM-V5 category to be more precise, but the term of psychiatric art I’m looking for is ‘shithouse-rat crazy.’”

Trump has confiscated the Kennedy Center named after the assassinated John Fitzgerald Kennedy, replaced the bipartisan board of directors and the president and installed himself — a man with the culture of a cobra — as president of the cultural center of Washington. The Honors Program is taking place as I write this sentence, but it will not be broadcast on national television until December 23. Guess who is hosting the program? He has appointed himself host, although he only lies when his lips move with the vocabulary of a young adolescent.

Trump fortified what Rick Wilson has diagnosed (after knowing Trump for a couple of decades) with these lines: “This is the greatest evening in the history of the Kennedy Center — not even a contest. There has never been anything like it and the show is already getting rave reviews.”

These lies are among the millions he has told in his lifetime. His lips were moving voraciously again.

Prediction: billionaires will blow planet Earth to oblivion

Billionaire Donald Trump and many of his billionaire buddies in his cabinet and the world believe climate change must be a hoax. Talk is cheap, but buying private jets and superyachts is super expensive. Some superyachts use enough fossil fuels in a year that would run a small country for a year. The sales of private jets are approaching records in 2024 and 2025 and the Edmiston superyacht brokers report record-breaking sales in 2025.

The world’s five biggest oil companies are making record-setting profits. Despite the disasters caused by the excessive use of fossil fuels, in 2022 alone, 119 oil pipelines and 432 gas pipelines were in development, 300 gas terminals were built, 432 coal mines were opened for business and 485 coal power plants were being built. Despite the increase in solar and wind renewables, the world burned more coal and more wood than ever before.

The basic problem is we are way beyond the limits proposed by the Paris Agreement, which aimed to keep our temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Those huge corporations that had invested trillions of dollars collectively in pipelines, gas lines, coal mines, coal power plants and other fossil fuel burning installations and regulations would lose trillions of their investments.

A few realities about abortion, pro-life groups, and contraception

In his collection of interviews, “Dakota Attitude: Interviews from Every Town in North Dakota,” James Puppe includes an interview with a farm couple who had 21 children in 21 years. It’s a fascinating page in a 638-page book filled with stories about North Dakotans from tiny towns.

Puppe had gone to a country school, where he joined another boy in first grade.That brought back memories. I graduated from eighth grade with a boy and a girl from Morrison County #54 Country School in Minnesota. But back to the story.

They (the family in the story) had a big farm so they could use a lot of help. The single page does not reveal whether they were Catholic, Lutheran, Yiddish, Snake Handlers, or “nones.” Anyway, they planted three big gardens and assigned three groups of kids to weed and take care of each of them.

The big question is: To have 21 children in 21 years, did they have sex once a year, 52 times a year, 365 times a year? Maybe more? Did they use contraceptives? Any miscarriages? Any “unborn babies” as the pro-lifers like to call conception dots, fertilized ovum and fetuses? (A fetus is not a baby until it takes its first breath filled with oxygen.) Any mentally or physically handicapped? This couple had to be extremely lucky. Yes, we know that life can begin at conception, but we also know that 20% of fetuses will still miscarry or die from some abnormality before birth.

We are not intelligently designed. Using the birth canal and semen dispenser to eliminate waste was probably not a smart idea. Neither was making the sexual rut for humans every hour of each day instead of just a few days in the fall or spring. It would have been better if we used a loud bellow just a few days a year. It certainly would have reduced the crime rate.

Even abstinence programs have not proven to solve sexual problems. Research indicates that members of Gen Z completing abstinence programs marry earlier and divorce sooner because they may have made the wrong choice of partner. And choice matters because having babies is an economic decision, not a religious one. In 2025 it costs about $320,000 to raise a child to age 18. That figure is never seen on pro-life posters or ads at abortion clinics.

Breaking news! Sex is goin’ on around the world!

In the 2024 summer Olympics, held in Catholic Paris, France, two new physical activities were added to the schedule: surfboarding and skateboarding. But another age-old form of physical activity may have set a record. Condoms had been quietly distributed to living quarters in previous Olympics, but only in the tens of thousands since the 1988 Olympics. In 2024, alcohol was banned for 14,000 athletes, coaches and event workers, but 300,000 condoms were made available for the two-week event.

“Every resident will have what they are expecting and what they need,” the director of the Olympic and Paralympic Village had reported.

The numbers record is still held by the 2016 Rio Olympics with a distribution of 450,000 condoms. The Vatican is dominant in South America, but elements of Protestantism are making some inroads along the coasts. No doubt that the contraceptives used in the Paris village will also cause some procreation among all the recreation. Paris is known worldwide as the City of Love. And physical accidents happen because of poor materials, calendar ignorance, lost pills and quickies under pressure.

The Bible says God checks us out in the womb

She must have missed this one or she would have done something about a most unusual case. I have kept files on many things in my 35 years of writing a weekly column. In going through files on abortion I ran across a story about twins: “World’s Oldest Living Conjoined Twins Die in Pennsylvania, aged 62.” Lori and George Schappell were born in 1961 joined at the skull, sharing 30% of their brain and essential blood vessels.

“I have known from a very young age that I should have been a boy,” said George during his life. George finally transitioned to male in 2007 at the age of 46. This is the first time a conjoined twin has transitioned.

A picture shows George had just one eye. George was four inches shorter and had spina bifida. He sat on a mobility device that Lori could push and steer.

Only 2% of conjoined twins are joined at the head. The most famous conjoined twins are Eng and Chang Bunker who were conjoined at the waist. They make an interesting read.

Before age 24, the conjoined Schappell twins lived in a home for people with intellectual impairments although they were not mentally disabled. After age 24, they lived on their own after graduating from a technical institute. They both worked for a Reading, Pennsylvania hospital for years. They had distinct hobbies and interests. George performed as a country music singer in Germany and Japan while Lori was a champion tenpin bowler.

For many years they shared a two-bedroom apartment, with each having a separate room — and then alternated which room they would sleep in each night. The twins rejected the idea of separation and were not studied if it was medically possible in their unusual condition. They did appear in a FX medical drama called “Nip/Tuck.”

In a 1997 documentary, Lori said: “Just because we cannot get up and walk away from each other, doesn’t mean we cannot have solitude from other people or ourselves.”

If George had to practice his music, they used his room and Lori remained quiet. They decided early on they would bathe and shower at different times.

“Would we be separated? Absolutely not,” George said in the documentary. “My theory is: Why fix what is not broken?”

Lori was once engaged to be married but her fiancé was killed in an auto accident. When she had gone on dates, George took books along to read.

There are records of conjoined two-headed one-body animals and vice-versa among cats, turtles, snakes, frogs, sharks and birds. Veterinarians and medical experts study conjoined humans and animals to understand causes and possible treatments. Separation involves extensive surgical planning by cardiology, neurosurgery, body, skulls and chest reconstruction surgical teams. I have never seen a study of conjoined humans conducted by theologians, bishops, priests and ministers looking for religious answers to sex and its thousands of pleasures and problems.