What is life but an attempt to establish some sort of order out of chaos? Towards that end, the universe gives us plenty to do.

Some scientists just won’t let go of the notion that the machines we have created will soon supplant us, an idea as old as Frankenstein. Like a dog with bone, they won’t stop chewing on that silly theory. These are the same people who put the first lens in the Hubble space telescope in backwards, mind you, haven’t cured a disease since polio back in the 1950’s and can’t for the life of them come up with a replacement for internal combustion engines, a technology dating to the 1600’s. Recently they got all huffy because millions and millions of us didn’t drop dead from the swine flu just because they predicted we would. So you’ve sort of got to take scientists’ predictions with a boulder of salt. As far as this “singularity” they predict will happen around the middle of this century, they can’t even agree on what it will entail other that the machines surpassing us in intelligence. Well, speak for yourselves, Einsteins.

Some of these guys say that the “Terminator” scenario will occur, with the world’s interconnected computers deciding that humanity is obsolete and needs to be exterminated like so many termites. Others say that machines will begin designing and building super-intelligent robots on their own, and doing it so quickly that their evolution will be measured in months, not millennia like every other creature. These new uber-creatures will kill us off and inherit the earth within the space of a decade or two. Exactly how they will accomplish that is open to debate, since we’re the ones that are armed to the teeth and have a very long history of killing other creatures and one another on a grand scale, not the imaginary robots. Lots of guys would like nothing more than to shoot the hell out of a bunch of androids.

Still others hold out hope for some sort of chip-enhanced immortality for some humans, getting fitted with all kinds of tiny artificial intelligence implants to super-size our own brains, while replacing our organs and muscles with plastic and steel replacement parts. Naturally the “some humans” they envisage gaining immortality are themselves.This sounds like a lot of wishful thinking on their part and a huge dose of egotism, and some have even said out loud that they hope to preserve their advanced knowledge and valuable expertise for the benefit of mankind, like they are some sort of indispensable people. Naturally no mention is made of their complete lack of any discernible personality, which would be pretty much the same as having that race of robots that others predict. No, thanks.

Who do these people think they’re kidding? While the internet and the rise of computers has been a beneficial and world-changing occurrence, these machines haven’t yet shown any ambition towards conquest of any sort. Any harm done by machines is done with people running them. So far, of all the thousands of deaths in car crashes, not a single one occurred as the result of a car acting on its own. And as sophisticated as computers are, they don’t do a damned thing on their own either. Attributing human treachery to machines is an odd conceit, and pretty nuts. If mankind meets its demise at the hands of machines, it will be with one of us at the controls doing something stupid or malicious.

As far as replacing body parts, doctors seem to be doing just fine using donated human organs, even replacing a couple of faces lately. Sure, we’ve got some titanium hips, plastic heart valves, pacemakers and the like, but they don’t last as long as living human tissue, still the best bet for people. The few dorks that have had chips implanted into their wrists have only succeeded in becoming human GPS devices, with no change in their IQ. Which is too bad since you’ve got to be pretty stupid to put a GPS chip in your wrist. Just who the hell would care where they are? Might come in handy to avoid them, though. 

So far nothing remotely exciting has happened to these fools who can’t wait to become human cyborgs like their favorite Star Trek characters. These people need to get out more, mix with regular people a little bit, maybe come to their senses and start working on something useful. There’s a few pressing problems where they might want to turn their attention, things like the daily genocide of world hunger that kills a child every 3 seconds. There’s still all those pesky deadly diseases they haven’t gotten around to curing; cancer, diabetes, AIDS and malaria. There’s a worldwide energy shortage, a pollution crisis, a shortage of sanitary fresh water resulting in 6 million deaths a year, all sorts of things that need attention. Maybe those expensive educations could come in pretty handy if our science people could just pull their heads out of their butts and get real.

If life was easy, it would be boring as hell. People thrive on turmoil.

If somebody painted the White House a different color, would it still be known as the White House? And would it have any effect on the balance of world power? Would the Blue House command much respect?

Other than their family and friends, does anyone recoil in shock with the news reports of another rap star getting shot?

Is winning American Idol a ticket to anything? One is hard pressed to think of anyone who emerged from that show being widely idolized. Unless maybe there’s some secret cults operating out there somewhere with altars to Clay Aiken and Rubin Studdard, conducting rituals and offering sacrifices and whatnot. That would be pretty amusing.

If Rush Limbaugh is now the head of the Republican Party, does that mean that Andy Dick is now the head comedian?

When people clamor for public schools to teach Creationism, do they mean only the Judeo-Christian version with the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve? Or maybe they mean all of them, like the Native American theory of creation where the earth was dug from the bottom of the sea by a muskrat and placed on a turtle’s back? Or how about the Chinese take on creation that the universe was once a big black egg containing only Pan Gu, who went to sleep for 18,000 years, then woke up and broke out of the egg with an axe and got busy creating the sky and the earth? There’s a whole bunch of creation stories, some of them pretty entertaining. Might as well give the kids a choice of fairy tales.

Did debates over the merits of torture go on during the Spanish Inquisition? 

Do people who Twitter all day long have jobs? Are they called Twitterers or Twits? And those “followings” you hear about, are they religious in nature?

Exactly who was it that declared war on fat guys in the United States? For what reason? They seemed like a pretty happy, law abiding bunch. Did they do something bad we need to know about? 

Back in the days when no child got picked up in a car from school, did a lot them go missing? 

Doesn’t Shotgun Dick Cheney seem a whole lot healthier and talkative now than when he was Vice President? When he was running the Bush The Younger Administration from some hidden underground lair it seems he was always getting one body part or another replaced with a high tech device, and the longest speech he was able to muster was a tersely barked “no comment.” Could it be that the process is now complete and he’ll live forever as an evil half man, half robot, always appearing on TV just as chatty as can be, spreading fear and advocating the worst things imaginable?

Do terrorist suspects have some sort of diabolical ability to escape our stateside maximum security prisons that American serial killers and dangerous gangster prisoners do not? Doesn’t seem all that likely, does it?

Is there a specific reason why people are eating ostriches all of a sudden? Are they scrambling their giant eggs too? Just one of those bad boys would do breakfast for the whole family.

Are the caribou and elk as ecstatic as everybody else about the successful reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park? 

Are scientists disappointed that the swine flu didn’t turn out to be a major pandemic and kill millions of people? Nobody likes to be wrong, especially people in long white lab coats. Think maybe some of them are mad at the rest of us for not dropping like flies and ruining their perfectly good theories?

If you can get a star named after yourself, can you pick the sun? Then everybody would have to call it by your name. How cool would that be?

When Al Franken gets to be a Senator, can America finally form a Senate Comedy Committee, thus formalizing the Senate as a bunch of clowns? Who would be better qualified than a professional humorist?

If Polar Bears were introduced to the Antarctic, would it be okay to call them Bipolar Bears? What would they care as long as they had plenty of seals to eat?

One of the finest advances in modern technology is the “DELETE” button. Too bad we can’t use it on some of the people we run across.

So, you’re a soldier, an Air Force fighter pilot and a combat veteran. You’ve earned nine air medals, including one for heroism. You have fought in two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Your government has spent $25 million training you and you’ve proved over and over to have been worth every cent of their investment in you. You are a lieutenant colonel, a leader of men 18 years into your career, a fine soldier by every standard of measurement. Well, except for one little thing. You are a homosexual man. So, what does your government do to thank you for 18 years of outstanding service and heroism? They fire you.

The man in question is Lieutenant Colonel Victory Fehrenbach. Two years from retirement eligibility he’s having his career stained by the Air Force by forcibly discharging him for being a homosexual. What bearing being gay has on flying a jet fighter and blowing stuff up and killing people is anybody’s guess. Apparently he did it better than most, what with all the medals and the elevation in rank to Lieutenant Colonel. His record was exemplary. That’s not the Air Force’s complaint. They’re willing to flush away 25 million of our taxpayer dollars because Fehrenbach was both an exemplary officer and gay. So maybe the thinking here is that killers of men should not also be lovers of men in their private lives.

And that’s basically what soldiers are trained for, to be killers of men. Whether you think soldiers are honorable or despicable, that is what soldiers do. Pretty much anybody can join the armed services, and at times pretty much everybody has to when a military draft is instituted. There hasn’t been a military draft in America for many years, and the all-volunteer armed service we employ today are very good at their jobs. They’ve been killing a whole lot of people in recent years. So, why does anybody think that only heterosexuals should be allowed to kill people legally? Do the homosexual killers of men have to settle for being serial murderers back here at home, and thus subject to arrest, imprisonment and possibly even execution for the kind of behavior that earns medals for bravery if they were soldiers?

Doesn’t seem fair. Because as well as being killers of men, soldiers risk their own lives by being the potential victims of the other side’s killers of men. A whole lot of them get maimed too. Like many a draftee in years past often wondered, why should the gays get out of it? Being gay certainly isn’t contagious. Being gay doesn’t mean you cannot be brave or do strenuous things. There have been a lot of gay soldiers, although most of them did not openly admit it. There have also been gay boxers, athletes, policemen and firefighters, professions that require a lot of courage and strenuous activity. So if a gay person wants to put his life on the line and maybe get to kill a whole bunch of people, well, why not? 

What are these generals afraid of? Don’t our armed services exist to protect every American? So why not let every American participate. The argument used against gay soldiers is the identical argument once used to deny black Americans their full Civil Rights and the opportunity to participate in every part of American society. That sort of thinking made 15% of the population Niggers, with all the indignity that the term implied. Would any general today fire a hero pilot because he was black? It’s just like that whole gay marriage controversy. It’s only a controversy because people are standing in the way of their fellow Americans’ freedom, sort of the opposite of what America was designed for. Jim Crow didn’t go away, he just started dressing better.

Some people talk about “allowing” homosexuals to form civil unions, like it was our call to allow or disallow any group of citizens the same rights everyone else gets. Well, guess again. It’s not our call, it’s in the Constitution, the piece of paper Colonel Fehrenbach swore to defend even though its full privileges were denied him. We don’t allow our fellow citizens their rights, they have them automatically when they are born or become naturalized American citizens. Any law that denies any man, woman or child the same rights as everybody else is unconstitutional, and any person who actively promotes such blatant oppression is a worthless asshole. 

And just what the hell is a civil union but marriage, anyway? But the people who want to create a new sort of civil union, one that is specifically not a marriage, don’t include any provisions for non-gay people to enter into them, thus creating a separate-but-equal institution, the kind of thing that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown vs The Board of Education. This reinforced the American ideal that separate is never equal when the separation is legally mandated.

If you want to be allowed to be you, then you can’t deny Colonel Fehrenbach the opportunity to be himself. If he wants to serve his nation by flying a jet, killing people and blowing stuff up and has the qualifications to do so, well, let him. He’s put his life on the line every time he got into that aircraft and flew a combat mission. He’s more than paid his dues and earned the respect and loyalty of his commanders. And if he wants to marry somebody named Fred, that’s his business and nobody else’s. And then there’s the money involved, too. Besides the wasted $25 million spent on Victory Fehrenbach’s training, how many billions do we throw away buy so busily oppressing 5% of our population?

And what about the human costs? What about the men who could be trained by a man such as Fehrenbach? His experience and knowledge just might save another pilot’s life. How many lives could have been saved by all those Arabic interpreters fired by the Pentagon years ago because they were gay? With enough Arabic interpreters working on intercepted terrorist messages, perhaps 9/11 could have been thwarted. Their absence made the process of deciphering Al Qaeda’s messages a long and tedious one, completed only after the attacks took place. But apparently a lot of people don’t care about that. All they know is that they’ve got Niggers back. Having Niggers to be superior to is very important to a lot of people, and this time they mean to keep them down. Let’s not humor these shitheads by buying into their bigotry. Let Colonel Fehrenbach keep his job and his dignity as a human being, such as it is, and stop this un-American tyranny against 5% of our citizens.

People are going to be who they are whether you approve or not. Besides, who asked you?

Ever notice how war mongers always ask people who question their lust for war whether or not they support our troops? They figure no can say no to that one, thus winning their argument without having to argue. Why fall into that fool’s trap? Either you are in favor of a war of against it and you should have solid reasons why. Supporting our troops has nothing to do with it. If the war mongers loved our soldiers so much they wouldn’t send them to war in the first place. Would they take the soldiers’ place? Doubtful. By and large the biggest war lovers are the people who never fought one. Why ask anyone to do what you yourself are unwilling to do? That is the way of the coward. Unfortunately for our troops, the nature of military service is that soldiers obey their orders, even when their government is using them in a cowardly and deceitful way, like expendable pawns on a chess board. 

Right now there are no American troops actively engaged in defending America since there is no one attacking America. Our troops are off attacking other countries. In Iraq American troops were used to steal oil that belonged to someone else. Was there any other reason to invade Iraq? What, to save them from a tyrant?  If that was American policy, why didn’t we attack Zimbabwe and hang Robert Mugabe? And just like in Afghanistan, the war lovers would have you believe it is our duty to remake these nations in the image of America. Why not remake camels into aquatic mammals too? Maybe you figure they’re tired of all that sand and would welcome living like otters as a refreshing change of pace. You figure that if you’re a complete idiot, that is. It’s pretty obvious that camels are not going to take to the rivers and streams anytime soon, at least not very enthusiastically.

So if you pay attention to the obvious, what is being done rather than what is being said, you have a situation where the troops we love to support are engaged in some pretty unsupportable activities. What began in Afghanistan as a military expedition to hunt down Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda thugs has turned into 6 years of war with nothing to show but death, destruction, corruption and patently ridiculous attempts to turn camels into otters. Rather than get in, kill the enemy and get out swiftly without giving a crap who governs a nation that was stupid enough to host Al Qaeda, we’re stuck in a war that looks more and more like the Vietnam War with every passing year, right down to the lame attempts to win hearts and minds at the point of a gun. Is there anybody these days saying how much the government of Vietnam resembles American democracy?

So, support the troops all you like, just don’t ask for it to be unanimous. Can you support our troops and detest what they are doing? How exactly does that work? Better to support them by bringing them home. It sure wasn’t their idea to invade those nations and stay there for 6 years as human targets for a resentful population while our politicians get to act tough on their backs. When all is said and done, Iraq will be the Iraq it would be if we never invaded and Afghanistan will melt back into the 16th century where they seem most comfortable. And as long as they are not launching armies at our shores, that’s really none of our business. Now is the time for our new president to put an end to this folly. Get the hell out of Iraq, and if they can’t kill or capture bin Laden, then there’s no reason to be in Afghanistan either. Too much blood has been spilled for nothing but the egos of war mongers. Enough. Support out troops. Bring them home.

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Take no prisoners. Leave that chore to the authorities.