​Government of the Absurd

By Ed Raymond 

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Should Politicians Be Arrested for Practicing Medicine Without a License?

After World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, European playwrights who survived the war wrote plays about man’s existentialism and had the characters express what happens to a society, country, or world when human existence lacks total meaning or purpose and communication among the peoples of the Earth breaks down. The plays often had the same beginning, making a complete circle instead of having a beginning and a different end.

There is a German soldier’s film at Auschwitz which illustrates this absurd circle. Fifteen men of his troop are shooting and killing 15 naked Jews who then fall into a pit. They shoot another 15 every five minutes. After shooting all day, the troops celebrate their performance after supper each day. This was real life, but the plays, making a complete circle, were eventually called plays in the Theatre of the Absurd. If you want to be depressed in circles, read Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano or Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot.

Playgoers around the world have evidently turned thumbs down on the weird Theatre of the Absurd stuff. It’s not on stages now. But politicians and dictators have created Governments of the Absurd—and particularly in the red Trumpian states of the Divided States of America.

I see all the sexologists in the North Dakota Legislature are determined to keep minors from seeing “images showing nudity or partial nudity” (SB-2123 and HB 1205). Why are these men and women thinking about sex all the time? Guilt? Regret? Eternal arousal?

The Bible Says Adam and Eve Used Fig Leaves to Hide Sex Instead of Poison Ivy

Are you aroused by cute cherubs? When people see the mostly nude body of Jesus Christ on the cross, how many are thinking about what’s under the sheet? If we had to cover the nude or partially nude in the Vatican and Protestant churches in the stained glass, statues, paintings, ceilings, and ways of the cross, the world would not have enough cotton or polyester. How many paintings of Homo sapiens in our history are not even wearing bikinis? How many Bible images of Adam and Eve have fig leaves in strategic places---after both had eaten apple crisp?

Where does this absurd stuff begin and end? Should we add the human race to the Manual of Mental Disabilities if they don’t know what’s under those tiny fig leaves? Why not pass a law requiring participants to be fully clothed during intercourse to keep from committing a felony?

Anyway, keep those book-banning laws coming. It’s the best way to get everyone from children to old geezers to read books. I see Valley City kids are finally reading “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex Relationships and Being Human.” Ignorance breeds stupidity—and fetuses.

Yes, Life Begins at Conception. But for Some It Doesn’t Last Long

Some pro-lifers spend their time discussing abortion, arguing “life begins at conception.” The problem is, there is a long stretch of development to go through before anyone can say we have “life.” My parents Noah and Alma had sexual intercourse in July,1931 and I was lucky to be a fetus for nine months, I was born in March of 1932.

I say lucky, because 20% of those conceived that day in 1931 didn’t make it through the nine innings (I played baseball for 18 years and coached it for eight) of gestation. Of 25 conceived in a few seconds marvelously spent in July, five did not survive to birth.

Five died early in miscarriages or because of other events. Although the fetus was checked in the womb by a “perfect” God, four percent had to have major surgeries to survive. Perhaps one died before mom knew she was pregnant. Perhaps one ended up stillborn because it died in the seventh month because of a malformed organ such as the liver or brain.

Read the history of 80-year-old Florida Representative Federica Wilson who was forced by Florida law to carry her dead fetus for two months because of stupid Florida laws. She almost died from toxins from the decaying fetus. Some fetuses do not develop a brain. Some with partials have been elected to join Governments of the Absurd.

Like baseball pitchers with a sore arm, we are all “day-to-day” as the manager or philosopher says, whether we are one day old or 91-years-old like me. Life begins at conception, and if we make it through the nine-month womb development, we become a baby who will spend the rest of their life “developing.” I work at it every day. Can’t help it. I will keep developing until I die. Then, like Rep. Wilson’s fetus, I will decay and rot. So be it. That’s “life.”

Dr. Richard Ambron has answers for us when it comes to our understanding of whether we are human or vegetable. As professor emeritus of cell biology at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, he has determined when we might be aware through our senses that we exist.

The second step is the complicated long one. When do we have the ability of the brain to create ideas and make predictions about how to best survive in that world where we exist? He breaks it down by weeks and years.

My heartbeat probably started to be audible in September,1931, in my tenth week of existence—but it would have to be detected by a Doppler Fetal Monitor. There’s a lot of crap outside the womb by pro-lifers about hearts beating at six weeks.

I started to move around a little in October, 1931 at 15 weeks. Millions of connections of neural circuits integrate just before the critical period of 24 to 28 weeks. It takes about six months of womb-time to feel sensations that we exist. I felt my existence, but I wasn’t in the manger in the family’s barn on December 25,1931 when I felt the first sensation.

When did I start having liberal ideas? It would have been several months after my birth on March 2,1932 when I began to correlate sensations and experiences. No wonder Noah and Alma decided I would be the last of five children, the only one left “day-to-day.”

Two Classes Should Make Decisions About Abortions: Doctors and the Pregnant

Many of the Governments of the Absurd are planning to pass legislation that will make abortions very dangerous for patients and anyone associated with the patient such as drivers, phone call conspirators, motel operators, and others assisting the pregnant one.

Alabama is attempting to make abortion a felony with punishments of up to 99 years. Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, and other states of Trumpistan are trying to pass bills such as chemical endangerment laws, trying to limit abortions to coat hangers and household chemical cleaners.

Abortion is not a religious issue, it’s an economic, healthcare, and population control issue.

A critical fact, not theory: Most seeking abortions already have a family, with more than 60% already mothers. They have excellent reasons for choosing abortion:

(1) they want to be able to take care of the kids they already have,

(2) they want to improve the lives of existing children,

(3) they want to improve, not denigrate, developmental milestones such as language and gross motor skills of the children they have, and

(4) they are too poor and don’t want to make their family situation worse.

Another critical fact: a human female with an average sex life has more than 1,000 “opportunities” to get pregnant during her fertility years. Good luck with that, particularly when “mistakes” are made with contraceptives that for a hundred different reasons may fail.

Here is just one example of the absurd people voting on abortion issues: A Trumpistan Republican dairy farmer elected to the Idaho Legislature offered his intellect to the issue: “I’m a lifelong dairy farmer and I have milked cows, walked behind lines of cows, so if you want ideas on reproduction and the women’s health thing, I have some definite opinions.” If he votes on a abortion issue, he is committing a felony against the pregnant.

The Turnaway Study about abortion conducted a few years ago indicated that people unable to get legal and safe abortions in their state and carry pregnancy to term “will experience long-term physical and economic harm. We are not a generous country that supports low-income mothers.” This is when abortions get very dangerous and the pregnant woman tries dangerous, life-threatening things.

Is Religion Constructive or Destructive in the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Battles?

At least 30 definitive studies on abortion show that 95% are positive about their choice to get one. If denied an abortion by law or poverty, the person suffers more mental harm than in getting one. Only five percent indicate regret, and that opinion is based on the loss of the fetus.

Let’s remember that a strong majority of North Dakotans support safe and legal abortions. Meanwhile, the government “absurds” in the state are against birth control, IVF access, marriage equality, and the right to vote.

The Vatican-sponsored March for Life emphasizes that “unborn children have a constitutional right to life.” Shouldn’t the right to life be the foundation of all justice? I agree.

That’s a question asked by Ken Sims, who often writes about abortion in the Fargo Forum. Sims says, “God made us in his own image.” Is “it” Paul Newman or Lena Horne?

The problem is, the “Perfect God” he and Roxanne Salonen write about made a mess of the birthing process during the creation. The perfect God did not make perfect Homo sapiens. Twenty percent do not take their first breath of “life.” Some “lives” are miscarried, some are fetuses with major mental and physical handicaps such as no brain, too many arms and legs, two heads on one body, or many deadly cancers, syndromes, and inherited viruses. Is this Satan’s work? Some are born with both sets of genitalia. Is this punishment or accident? Does God choose who lives or dies?

It’s difficult to trust that the Vatican male representatives dressed in skirts represent humankind in what life is all about. This is the bunch that outlawed contraceptives so there would be more Catholics than Muslims. This is the bunch who said for centuries that all unbaptized babies should spend eternity in Purgatory (Dante’s Limbo). They spent decades studying that problem.

It took this bunch 400 years to apologize to Galileo for proving the earth revolved around the sun instead of vice-versa. They put him on house arrest and burned his follower Giordano Bruno at the stake for not shutting up.

The Vatican does not recognize same-sex marriage or gender fluidity and condemns homosexuality with that anti-science line “intrinsically disordered,” although St. Peter’s and Catholic seminaries have been infiltrated by many gays, some wearing the skirts of bishops and cardinals.

Accept it! The top 1,500 species are not “disordered!” The LBGTQ+ community has been here for at least 300,000 years.

But what is most damning, the Vatican has influenced evangelical and fundamentalist Christians to adapt and adopt many of these anti-science ideas “developed” over 2,000 years. The controversial ideas enhance their White power within our country that is suffering through more than 200 years of civil war. Were Blacks created to serve Whites as preached from the pulpits of Christian Identity churches?