The day the world went away

 

There’s no image to go with this blog. I had the hardest time, at first deciding why the hell Nine Inch Nails went with the image of a snake in the sand, sidling away as the main image of the video for their song ‘The Day the World Went Away’.  I kinda get it now: it’s not that there should BE any one symbol – it’s that ‘the world’ is something DIFFERENT for each of us. The end of your world is NOT the end of mine. The end of MY world is ( I hope to God) not the end of yours.  A day will come, I’m certain, for everyone alive then, when the End of the World will in fact BE the end of everyone’s world – except, or course, when that happens, no one will be absolutely certain that this is the last gasp for everyone.

We all seem to spend a lot of angst, over something that we not only CAN’T know, but which Christians take as a matter of faith is UNKNOWABLE! (MOST christians, that is; various sects have insisted that THEY knew exactly when the end of the world would come … except, the predicted date came and went, and MOST people of that faith went their way and found a DIFFERENT faith, but enough remained to found the Seventh Day Adventists.)

I’m writing on wordpress, because, when I write on social media, it’s usually that I’ve been pissed-off by some wildly conservative folks, and at that point I usually am drunk enough to say what I actually mean — That is rarely a very diplomatic post, though it’s usually an extremely CLEAR one, even if it IS heavy on the vitriol!

The next day, of course, I’m ashamed — not because of anything I said, but because I said it while dead drunk, and OFTEN added barbs into it that I’d have resisted, had I been sober.

You can’t win arguments, you can’t convince opponents, when your argument is CHOCK FULL of disdain, and axide (along with, yeah, booze).  I know this, because I’ve nearly always been lured into it by people slinging disdain, hate, and acid.

You know how MOST extremists, left or right, approach arguments? It’s to make fun of their opponents then claim THEY won, because the opponent took the bait and engaged with the irrelevant argument put forward, OR, ignored the bait, then were accused of not answering a debate point.  I happen to think the Right does it the most, but, hey, some people on the Left do it too, so what’s the harm?

THE FUCKING HARM IS THAT NOTHING IS DECIDED, NOTHING IS SETTLED UPON, NOTHING IS PROVEN!!!!

There are PLENTY of people on the Left that exhibit this behavior. I’m ASHAMED of them and really wish they’d embrace someone ELSE’S crusade, because there are people you don’t want in your Foxhole, ever!  There are WAY more people on the right who do this, and they ALL deserve to get their comeuppance — except they WON’T, of course, because THEY are the only people they acknowledge as being right.

 

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and now Trump

Politicians lie.  Democrats, Republican, Independents, Tea Party, Libertarians, they ALL lie.  Everyone knows it. It’s been a running joke for as long as people have been governed.

Donald Trump and his gang take it to a whole new level.

That, in itself, is not such a big problem; most news outlets leap on every lie that dribbles out of these people and quickly expose the falsehood.  The problem is, Trump’s supporters choose to believe his lies, automatically label any dissent as bogus, and stare blindly at ‘facts’ which they claim have been manufactured by the media! Under other circumstances, I’d be perfectly willing to let these people stew in their fantasy worlds – but they’re running the country now, and their fantasies are intruding on our reality!

The thing is this:  Democracy depends on discussion – and there’s no discussion with these people!  When one side labels everything that comes out of the mouths of the other side as a lie, fake-news, or propaganda, discussion devolves into “I’m right, you’re wrong, and that’s that!”

We’ve been heading this way for a while now. The GOP leadership are all wealthy, but they cultivate followers who are poor, ill-educated, and disinclined to accept any opinion but their own.  They believe in religious freedom – for Christians.  They believe in the science that makes their TVs work, but not evolution, and, increasingly, not in vaccines. They believe in free-trade – which they define as “Other countries can buy our goods, but we won’t be buying theirs!”  They’d be outraged if anyone told them they couldn’t marry as they see fit – and refuse to tolerate same-sex marriage.  They raged against Obama-care, spent 8 years obstructing the government in protest of it – and now say they really just want to improve  it.  They think they can just ignore China, let Japan take care of themselves, ignore Russia’s intervention in Syria, and completely forget that they started a war (under false pretenses) and sixteen years later, Americans are still being killed, because they never bothered to say what constituted victory – and, obviously, America can never accept defeat!

That last bit is perhaps the most frightening.

I’m a former military officer. US Military doctrine is defined in Joint Publication 1: Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States. That document defines how we go about conducting war.  It says, among other things, that every military operation should have a clearly defined goal – a mission.  It’s what you tell the privates they’re fighting for. It defines how you know you’ve won. It defines when the fighting – and dying – should stop.

George W. Bush committed us to a war that had no mission. Americans were pissed about 9/11 and we all wanted revenge.  I’m sure he wanted revenge, too – but revenge is only a mission if you intend to totally annihilate the other side.  Annihilation can only be achieved if you can clearly define who your enemy is.

Viet Nam taught us what it was like when you couldn’t tell the enemy from the people you were defending.  Bush ignored that, and committed us to battle in a region where no one wears a uniform, and everyone carries a gun. That particular region was previously invaded by the full might of the Red Army – and a few CIA operatives taught the inhabitants how to defeat a modern army!  The Russians were there for ten years, before finally accepting that they couldn’t be successful.

Bush ignored that as well. We’ve been there sixteen years.

The pretext for invading Iraq was the claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.    UN weapons inspectors in Iraq had already reported that there were none. Bush ignored this and committed us to an invasion. They found no WMDs – but, “Hey, we found Saddam!”

4,424 of our soldiers died for that. 31,952 of our soldiers were wounded in action to achieve that.

Desert Storm, under Bush’s father, had totally destroyed the Iraqi military, and most of it’s infrastructure.  Storming’ Norman wisely stopped short of entering Baghdad, and Bush senior wisely refrained from ordering him to take the city, because both knew that what had been a largely bloodless campaign would become a bloody nightmare in that city. All our advantages would be nullified there. The enemy, dressed just like the inhabitants, could not be identified until they opened fire – and in an urban environment, it’s just plain suicide to concede the first shot to the enemy!  More importantly, there was no need to take the city – Desert Storm did have a well-defined mission:  drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and destroy their ability to wage war.  Both of those objectives had been met.

Bush senior had, at one time, been Director of Central Intelligence.  He knew the value of knowing the facts, the wisdom of learning the lessons of the past, the foolishness of wishful thinking, and the value of American lives. Bush junior, ignored all of that.

“But, hey, we got Saddam!”

Then Afghanistan. 2,386 US soldiers killed. 20,049 wounded in action. 1,173, US civilian contractors killed. Sixteen years of warfare. Widespread PTSD in returning vets. The VA, utterly unable to deal with the sheer numbers of vets who needed help.

“But, hey, we got Bin Ladin!”

Obama recovered the economy that Bush junior wrecked.  Trump’s insistence on pulling out of our trade agreements threatens to reverse that. His insistence that he’ll build a wall on the Mexican border – and make Mexico finance it – has pissed off Mexico, and the Mexican President. His insistence of pulling out of NAFTA threatens to damage not just the American economy, but those of Canada and Mexico as well.

During interviews soon after the election, he was asked “how will Americans know their economy is better?”  his reply was “I’ll tell them!“

 

Safe?

 

I think I must have missed something.

At some point in the past couple of years – no doubt when I was so utterly self-absorbed that I stopped paying attention to the rest of the world – someone came up with the idea of a ‘Safe Space’.

Apparently this is a thing on university campuses (like the one where I work.)  A ‘Safe Space’ is supposedly a place where negative comments toward sexual identities are not tolerated. A place where no one’s ideas, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, or convictions should be challenged. In effect, a place where debate, education, and questioning are forbidden.

Look, I can understand declaring a place where taunting, uncivil, mocking, and bullying behaviors are considered unacceptable … but there are 3 big problems with this idea:

1. Taunting, uncivil, mocking, and bullying behaviors should be considered unacceptable  everywhere! 
2. In many cases, ‘Safe Places’ have begun to be declared as places where there’s no conversation, no disagreement, no questioning, allowed … in effect, it’s ok to have opinions, provided they’re substantially the same opinions as those held by the people whom the space has been declared ‘Safe’ for.
3. While people should feel free to consider their sexuality as they see fit, declaring a place where no one disagrees ultimately does a disservice to the cause of achieving societal acceptance of all sexual identities.

In consideration of point 1), take a close look at what’s really being stated:  if this place is declared to be ‘Safe’ from incivility and bullying, the tacit assumption is that it’s considered normal and acceptable for everywhere else to be ‘Un-Safe’!

When it comes to point 2), the idea that other opinions – or at least the expression of other opinions – is outlawed, just claws at my soul! The First Amendment guarantees our Freedom of Expression – the very same Freedom of Expression which forms the basis of the argument that one person’s sexuality is no-one else’s damned business!  If you stand up for your right to express your sexuality, you are also standing up to someone else’s right to express opinions in opposition to that!  That’s entirely apart from the idea that it’s ok to determine what people are allowed to think, feel, or express in a given space – the term I’m trying hard to avoid is ‘Mind Control’!

Finally, let’s consider point 3) – and let’s use race relations as a comparison:  the idea of the Civil Rights Movement was that black people should have precisely the same rights as white people – not ‘Separate but Equal’:  the Supreme Court, in a series of major decisions, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education, basically ruled that Separation inherently prevented Equality!  When you declare this space as ‘safe’ for diverse sexual identities, you are, in effect, declaring that you don’t expect the same rights as people in all those other spaces.  Instead of insisting that your rights be honored identically to the rights of heterosexuals, you’re basically saying “well, we don’t like their attitudes – but as long as they respect this space, we’re ok with it …”

There’s a final point:  the implication that we aren’t equal to the debate – that we need to be able to cower behind the walls of a ‘Safe Space’, rather than forcing bullies, the ignorant, the intolerant, and the fanatics, to respect our rights.  I don’t identify with any of the sexual identities listed as ‘Safe in this Space’ – and I shouldn’t have to! My rights ought to be no different from the rights accorded to any of those other identities – and letting the intolerant get away with this bullshit cuts into my rights just as much as it cuts into yours! If they’re allowed to decide who gets rights, and who doesn’t, what’s to say they won’t, at some point, decide that I shouldn’t have the full rights of any citizen?

Instead of hemming yourselves up in ‘Safe Spaces’, maybe the idea ought to be to make the whole planet unfriendly to ignorant assholes!

Life as I see it

 

I don’t really have a lot of subscribers – and the ones I do have don’t tend to comment, or post likes or dislikes.  It probably means I’m a lukewarm writer at best.  One person, though, seems to have read a lot of my posts and approved at least some of them … I’ve been to her site and she seems to be be dealing with a lot of the same issues that people around me are dealing with (my own issues are pretty weird, in comparison – probably because I’m a pretty weird person, while she seems to be a more normal, if very sensitive person.)

I don’t know if she’ll approve, but I wanted to recommend her blog, the content of which may be somewhat evident from its name:

https://beinghertheotherwoman.wordpress.com

I haven’t read it all, but the blog deals with the consequences of love in modern America – and how something as pure and simple as love can get tangled in the expectations of society, the realities of economics, and the absolute contrariness of human beings. In response to a “like” she posted reading one of my posts, I wrote her a letter, which I’d like to share with you all.

“I don’t really know what to call you … from time to time, WordPress tells me you like one article or another of my blog, https://dourscot.wordpress.com … I appreciate your appreciation, and wish there was some way I could ease your obvious pain!  I haven’t read through your whole blog, yet:  my own problems make it difficult for me to read through sad issues.  I’ve decided I NEED to read it though, because you seem like someone I’d like to know more about!

I hate that you’re in pain. Really. And I love that you’re in pain. Really.  The reason? Only the dead are without pain – and yours marks you as alive in ways that most people simply cannot comprehend!

Many, if not most, people go through their days like zombies … they just go through the motions. Their pains amount to “damn I got a traffic ticket!” “Here comes another fight with that bastard I married!”  Despite all this, they see no need to change … they see this as the normal fate of human beings! “That’s life.” they say, and shrug.

Ask them about true love, and they’ll claim, cynically, that either it’s a manufactured artifact of Hollywood, or is so rare you can go your whole life without meeting a couple like that.

So they don’t look.  They assume that everyone’s life is shit, so why even try for anything better? There is a certain practicality among men:  they assume that if something can’t be attained, there’s no point even considering it. Women, on the other hand, are creatures of hope:  they may not believe Prince Charming is coming for them, but somewhere, in the deepest recesses of their hearts, the hope he will!

Someone who understands. Someone who cares. Someone who can stand between you and the dark. Someone designed specifically to meet your needs, and make you happy …

My own outlook is very feminine. I believe somewhere deep in my heart that I have a soulmate!  She’s out there! Just waiting for that magic moment when we’ll recognize one another from across a room. My awkwardness with women will fall away, I’ll achieve a boldness I’ve never felt in my life. I’ll head straight for her, introduce myself, declare that I’ve never seen eyes like hers, that I felt an immediate attraction, and that she absolutely MUST let me have the next dance!

Later in the evening, I’ll probably demand to know where the hell she’s been all my life and doesn’t she have ANY idea what I’ve suffered waiting for her?!?!

Things will likely devolve from there.

There isn’t a perfect existence:  we aren’t born perfect, we don’t attain perfection, so how can there be? We can, however do two things:  notice the patterns around us, and choose paths that will lead us out of misery!  There are a few rules, that might help. You’re going to hate hearing them, but here they are:

*  Selfish, self-centered people DON’T CHANGE. NOT EVER. NO MATTER HOW MUCH LOVE YOU POUR INTO THEM!

People who are that convinced that they are at the center of the universe don’t see any REASON to change.  It’s the WORLD that owes them! The WORLD that ought to mold itself to make their lives better. Husband, wife, whatever – that person’s only love is himself (I use the male pronoun because this is almost always a man.) Such a person WILL NEVER return your love – and pouring your love into him is pouring it into a black hole!

*  Such people can seldom hold a job.

They have a sense of entitlement:  a feeling that they shouldn’t HAVE to work – their wants should be provided for them, gratis. They typically get married so as to soak off their wife.  Money that could go toward retirement, of improving your lifestyle, or caring for the kids, goes to taking care of him – because he won’t be bringing in much, and will often claim to have been fired (when he’s usually quit.)  If the wife leaves, they’ll move in with relatives, and soak off them, If the relative kicks them out, they’ll find a girlfriend (probably had one all along, just waiting for his use).

*  Such people – quite subconsciously – target and use sympathetic people.

If asked, they’d deny it vociferously. A single glimpse of their pattern reveals it, though:  they find generous, caring, loving, kind-hearted people. Over, and over, and over.  The flip side of the coin is there too:  there is something about such men that the women I just described find intensely appealing. Take a good look at their past boyfriends, or husbands:  they are all the same. All will be self-centered, selfish, usually possessive, and jealous.

I guess what I’m saying is that such men are utter bastards.  I guess I’m also saying the women they prey on are born victims.  The Bastards see no REASON to change who and what they are – the victims have AMPLE reason, but can’t seem to make that choice … can’t seem to recognize that the creature they’re involved with isn’t who they wanted him to be, and never will be.

And when they leave one, they go find another. Not another man who will treat them well, another of the exact SAME kind of man they just left!

I really don’t know why I’m writing to you, except I think maybe you’re beginning to see these same patterns – and the infinite misery these behaviors cause.

I hope you’ll be well. I hope you’ll choose to walk away from pain.  I hope you’ll find what it is you need, because I swear to God I believe there’s someone out there who’s decent, and kind-hearted, and suffering from loneliness. Someone you’d be perfect for – if only you’ll take the steps to make him perfect for you.  You can’t find a dolphin, if you’re chumming for sharks.

Best wishes!

dourscot

Scott Davis

Oxford, MS”

I hope ‘Being.Her’  won’t object to my sharing her letter … if she does, and writes to me, I’ll delete it.  I hope she won’t, though:  there are things in it that I believe some woman would be the better for reading!

President TRUMP?!?!?!?!?

 

I live in a country where there are enough stupid, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, gun-toting ASS-HOLES to elect Donald freaking Trump President.

I feel sick.

Impatience

 

I ran out of cat food this morning.

I get up early enough that I can make a run to Walmart, if need be, and still arrive at work with time to spare.  I’ve foolishly started feeding the little family of cats that lives outside my house, and they’d gotten used to it enough that I could see their little eyes glowing from the bushes, as I walked by their bowl without filling it.

I actually explained to them that I’d be right back, just had to run to Walmart for their food.  Sheesh.

I got in the car, and headed out of my neighborhood via the road that would blend best with the morning rush. At the stop sign, was a HUGE expensive SUV.  I couldn’t tell who was driving it, but I’d been behind the damed thing before, and whoever the driver was seems TOTALLY incapable of judging when a gap in the traffic would allow him/her/it to turn right. I waited. And waited. And WAITED, as one gap after another came and went.

Eventually, when the road was entirely clear in both directions, the damned thing pulled out at a snail’s pace … like I said, I’d been stuck behind this person before, and I knew if I followed I’d be absolutely BOILING with road rage when it took us 15 minutes to drive the one mile to the University.  So I turned the other direction. I could get to the Highway that way. It might be a longer distance, but it would be quicker than driving behind pokey.

I hit the stop light.  Ordinarily, I’d always been lucky enough to avoid it, but not this time.

When it turned green, I had a whole blessed stretch of road to myself, clear to the entry to the highway.  I don’t speed – but I DO drive at the speed limit, so I got on the entry ramp fairly quickly, only to find myself behind yet ANOTHER person totally incapable of handling the decision of whether it’s safe to enter the highway.  The idiot had a clear lane, as all the drivers on the road had courteously shifted to the far lane, but THIS idiot came to a complete freaking stop at the YIELD sign!

I shouted “For God’s sake will you just GO!”

It didn’t do any good, because my windows were up and so were his. Eventually there was a long stretch of both lanes being empty, and the jerk timidly eased out into the highway – at 30 miles per hour.  I roared around him into the far lane, letting the screech of my tires express my frustration.

No more problems. Got to Walmart, got my cat food, used the self check -out, got back into my car, and was able to get back home without incident. The feral cats were out in the driveway and fled at the sight of me, but I got out of the car, filled their bowls, chucked the bag inside my house, and returned to the car.

At the stop sign, there was another, completely different, trendy, expensive SUV, with a driver who probably COULD make a decision – if she weren’t so busy texting.  She had her phone held against the upper rim of her steering wheel … would type something while a big gap in traffic went by, then look up and see that traffic was solid again, and would type something else.

I backed up, pulled into a neighbors driveway, turned around and headed for the OTHER way out of my neighborhood.  This time, my escape was clean, and I headed for the University, where I work. There were police at the intersections directing traffic, which was cool, because things always went smoothly when someone OTHER than timid, texting, assholes unable to make a decision, was directing things.  The direct path to my building has been built over, don’t ask me why, so I had the choice of going a long way around in one direction, or a shorter path in the other direction – that led through a parking lot. Without pausing to think of what this meant, I made for the latter path.

At the parking lot, I found two cars just crawling along, looking for parking places that were manifestly not there.  When they, at length, came to a space with LOTS of open parking places, one slowly and carefully parked, leaving two spaces clear on either side of him, then IMMEDIATELY popped his door open.  The car behind him, had already started to crawl toward the space to his left, but stopped when she saw the open door.  A long moment passed as the parked idiot fished around in his back seat for a brief case, and the OTHER idiot patiently awaited him.  Eventually, as the first guy showed no signs of ending his back-seat quest, the second person decided “Hey, maybe I could park in one of the many spaces on the OTHER side of him!”

As she began to edge forward, the person behind me, with a roar of the engine made to pull around us both, only to stop with a screech as she began her turn to the left. The screech rattled her, and she stared at him for a long second before resuming her slow, stately turn to park. I looked at the impatient kid to my left, and he glanced at me, then took a longer glance, and apparently my face reflected something of the morning’s frustrations, because he gestured for me to precede him.

I left quite a bit of rubber behind me to testify to my utter lack of appreciation for all three of the freaking idiots.

I feel at this time, that I should point out, gentle reader, that it took me HALF A FUCKING HOUR TO DRIVE THE ONE MILE TO MY OFFICE!!!!!!!

I’m not an impatient man. I’m not. I am, however, someone who has no patience with drivers who are too timid to operate their vehicles, drivers who can’t make a simple go/no-go decision, drivers who’d rather text than operate their vehicle, drivers who can’t distinguish between a YIELD sign and a STOP sign, or drivers who look at a wealth of empty parking spots and need time to decide, “which one will I park in???”

Sadly, such drivers, even if they are a minority, seem to cause a majority of problems, not to mention triggering my migraines.  Thanks a lot.

Repost re-read, it’s still relevant!

An Open Letter to Humanity

Monotheism

 

(Excerpt from my up-coming book Messed-up! Enjoy!)

 

Monotheism

Judaism was founded around 3500 years ago, give or take a few centuries. In other words, within a couple of centuries, give or take, of Akhenaten’s rule. There has been quiet speculation, ever since the discovery of Akhenaten’s religious revolution, that the Jews got the idea of a single God in Egypt, where the descendants of Jacob were said to have been slaves. When this question is put to Jewish scholars, they are quick to claim that there were Israelite slaves in Egypt before Akhenaten, and that he probably got his idea of a single God from imperfectly overheard slave gossip. It seems unlikely that the answer will ever be known with any certainty – but, if it turns out to be the latter, it’s a good bet that history will be sued for Libel by a massive coalition of Jewish Law-Firms.

 

Anyway, according to the Scriptures, the Pharaoh of Egypt, during the time of Israelite servitude (he’s never named in scripture, just called ‘Pharaoh’), decided that there were too many of them, and they were beginning to pose a threat. Still, Egypt had always had a need for slave-labor, and he couldn’t afford to kill them all, so he hit upon a solution that he felt was a ‘win-win’:  he ordered the slaughter of all newborn male infants.  This was a ‘win’ for him, because he wouldn’t have to worry about a ton of rebellious, moody, teenagers showing up in a few years – and he considered it a ‘win’ for the Israelites, because some of them would go on living, albeit in miserable bondage. What’s not to like?

Accordingly, as the word of the impending slaughter leaked out, an Israelite woman named Jochebed, who’d just given birth, decided her brand new baby boy stood a better chance floating in a basket on the river with the crocodiles, than he did against Pharaoh’s Newborn Massacre Squad. She took a basket, sealed it up with pitch, put the baby in it, and, completely ignoring his threats of legal action, dropped him in the river to fend for himself – the correct phrasing for which, at the time, was “put him in the hands of the Lord!”

The Lord apparently took the hand-off without a hitch, sprinted downstream, and lateraled to the daughter of Pharaoh, who was out having a refreshing bath.

Like most women, she was all “Oooo, a baby!”  and, despite the objections of her attendants, she filed for adoption, giving the child the name “Moses”, which some have interpreted as “Gift of the River”. (Incidentally, there are no records regarding Pharaoh’s feelings about a child of unknown parentage being raised as a prince of Egypt – but unless he’s the most inattentive parent ever, he had to have known that his daughter hadn’t given birth herself!  In view of this, I wish to register my objections that the scriptures contain no account of what happened when the Pharaoh asked “where the hell did that come from????” )

Scripture pretty much skips everything after that, until young Moses comes across an Egyptian smiting an Israelite, takes exception, and does some smiting of his own. Sadly, he smote rather harder than he intended and the Egyptian croaked. With cunning born of need, Moses dragged the body away and hid it in sand, smugly assuming no one had noticed. Not long after, he came on some Israelites fighting and demanded to know why. One of them sneered at him and asked “What are you going to do? Kill us like you did that Egyptian?”

Oh. Shit.

Since it was apparent that EVERYONE knew about the whole smiting of the suspiciously-missing-Egyptian, Moses decided maybe it might be a really good time to tour the Sinai Desert.

He eventually ended up in a place called Midian, where a dude named Jethro managed the biggest sheep ranch in the region. At dinner, Jethro explained that he had loads of daughters, no sons, and – hey, Moses wouldn’t happen to be into sheep would he???

Moses settled down when Jethro hastily explained that he hadn’t meant it that way. Soon thereafter he married one of Jethro’s daughters, and settled in to learn the sheep-ranching trade.

At some point later, while rounding up some strays, he noticed a bush, high up on the slopes of the nearby haunted, er, Holy mountain.  Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have paid much attention:  there were bushes all over the place. This one, though, he noticed, was on fire – again nothing all that out of the ordinary, since the mountain was prone to Lightning-strikes – except that this burning bush wasn’t being reduced to ashes as had been his experience with other burning bushes, so he decided a closer look was called for.

Upon nearing the bush, he heard a voice come out from it, ordering him to halt, and remove his shoes, for he was standing on Holy Ground. A somewhat protracted conversation ensued, the bush, er, sorry, the Bush, explaining that it was actually the God of the Israelites, and that he had heard the wailing of his people that were in Egypt, and that Moses was to head on back there and convince Pharaoh to let them go.

One would think that, having received the commands of God, Moses would have saluted smartly, replied “Yes, sir!” and gotten right to it.  Moses, however had some … concerns.

According to scripture, Moses asked who he was, that he should approach Pharaoh?  It’s hard to fault him, really:  he WAS, after all, wanted for murder, there.  The Bush crackled in irritation, while most likely the Lord counted to ten Billion, then he assured Moses that he would be with him, and it would all work out. Moses then pointed out that he wasn’t much at public speaking, so maybe God should find someone else. The Bush fumed for a moment in silence, while presumably the Lord counted to ten trillion, then he told Moses that the job was his, he wasn’t getting out of it – but, yeah, ok, he could get his brother, Aaron, to be his mouthpiece.

Moses, having gotten his way – at least partially – may have been getting a little cocky. He had yet another issue:  if he was going to demand that Pharaoh release the Israelites in the name of their God, it was a good bet that Pharaoh would want to know just exactly what that name was. (Moses was assuming ‘Bush’ wouldn’t be very convincing.)

The Bush blazed ominously for several seconds, while presumably the Lord counted to ten quadrillion, then explained, loftily, “I AM.”

Moses’ brow furrowed, “Excuse me?”

“I AM WHO I AM.”

Moses stared at the bush for a bit, “er, yes, well …”

“YOU SHALL SAY THAT I AM HAS SENT YOU.”

“Ah. Yes, well, that should do it, I expect.”

Scripture doesn’t say, but it seems likely, at this point, that the Lord may have thought “This is going to be a LONG exodus!”

In any case, Moses returned to Egypt, found the Pharaoh not particularly interested in releasing his slave-labor force, coerced him with a variety of nasty plagues, and even after all that drama still couldn’t make any headway – whereupon God sent the Angel of Death to join the negotiations. The people of Egypt woke up and discovered all their first-born had croaked.

That did the trick.

The Israelites departed from Egypt – taking a short-cut across the Red Sea – and began wandering Sinai, Jordan, and northern Arabia.  The Talmud claims they were being punished for refusing to attack Jericho the first time they got there. It’s hard to blame them, really:  slaves aren’t taught to use weaponry, nor are they versed in storming a heavily fortified city.  Nevertheless, it would appear that God was miffed at them for their lack of faith, and sent them to wander the Sinai till that entire generation had died out.

Perhaps coincidentally, the Jews began to build an army during those 40 years.  They learned the craft of making weapons and armor, learned how to attack fortifications, and, when they got back to Jericho, they had a badass army, a terrific general, and the Ark of the Covenant – also known as the Big Golden Box of Whoop-Ass.

God had ordered the construction of the Ark while the Hebrews were encamped at mount Sinai.  The two tablets of the Ten Commandments (written by God’s own finger) were stored within it, along with Aaron’s Rod, and a pot of Mana. The latter was the special divine bread with which God showered the Israelites, who were starving because, let’s face it, you can’t really grow food in Sinai, and certainly not while wandering in penance.

The story goes that a couple of months after leaving Egypt, the provisions they’d taken with them ran out, and the people began to bitch that they ought to have stayed in Egypt, where at least they had enough to eat!

God heard about it, counted to thirty-gazillion, then told Moses that he’d feed the people himself.  Every evening, the camp would be covered with quail, which could be caught and killed without skill. Every morning there would be a dew of Mana, which could be gathered and eaten like bread. Moses instructed the people they were to gather as many quail as they needed, and one pot of mana for each person, and that they weren’t to save ANY of it till the next day.

Naturally some tried to – only to find it rancid and crawling with maggots.

This supposedly went on for 40 years.

Anyway, at the end of all that time, they had an army, weapons, armor, Joshua, and the aforementioned Big Golden Box of Whoop-Ass, and they were at last ready to take the promised land.

Everywhere they went, the Ark went first:  carried by Levites, some 800 yards in advance of the Jewish host, carefully veiled by skins and blue cloth, because the Ark was not for the eyes of ordinary Joes, or even ordinary Jews. When they came to the Jordan River, the river went dry as soon as the feet of the priests with the Ark touched the water.  Since they were pretty sure the water would be back as soon as the Ark left the river-bed, the priests hung out where they were while the host crossed, over. When the last of the people were across, the priests carried the Ark over, and, sure enough, as soon as they left the river-bed, it became a river again.

For their next trick, the Levites bore the Ark around the City of Jericho once a day for seven days, preceded by seven priests honking on ram’s horns . On the seventh day, they made seven laps around Jericho, then the whole army shouted, and the walls fell flat, much to the consternation of the Jerichans … Jerichites? Who knows – it doesn’t matter much, because none of them were left alive afterward anyway, since the Lord, in his mercy, had ordered heren – the ritual slaughter of every man, woman, and child in the city.  Scripture says they spared only one person: a prostitute who had sheltered the spies Joshua sent to check the place out. Joshua’s spies had apparently endorsed her as “really good!”

And so it went. Wherever the Big Box of Whoop-Ass went, bad things happened to the enemies of Israel – right up to the point where the Philistines (likely descendants of those Bastards from Nineveh) captured the thing, and began to experience SERIOUS bad things, themselves.

Of course, some fairly bad things happened in the Israeli camp when they got the news:  the Priest, Eli, dropped dead upon hearing of it, and his daughter who was in the throes of delivering a child when the news got there, made up her mind to call the kid ‘Ichabod’ – meaning The Glory Has Departed Israel – despite the fact that A) the kid had done not a damned thing to deserve it, and B) it would doom him to a lifetime of explaining how one brief word could contain that whole dolorous phrase!

Anyway, as I said, the Philistines, having carried off the Ark, were having problems.

They had originally born it to Ashdod, where it was placed in the temple of Dagon. The next morning, the statue of Dagon was found prostrate before it.  They somehow put the statue back in it’s place, only to find, the next morning, the statue had been prostrated and broken before the Ark. There was more to come. Ever creative, the Lord smote the people of Ashdod with inoperable hemorrhoids. Then there was a plague of mice, over all the land. It’s likely that at this point, the Philistine leaders were approached  by the city fathers of Ashdod, who asked that they take the freaking thing out on tour!

They took the Ark to Gath, where the people were smitten with boils. The same thing happened when it arrived at Ekron.

After seven months of this, the Philistines, on the advice of their seers, decided maybe it’d be a good idea to give the damned thing back – accompanied by a peace-offering in the form of golden images of the mice, tumors, boils, and hemorrhoids.

Word got around that it was a really bad idea to mess with the God of the Israelites.

Good Knight!

 

(The following is an excerpt from my soon-to-be-released book Messed-Up! ©2015, Scott Davis, All Rights Reserved to Author)

When the black death had passed, it left a number of important changes in its wake:  for starters, with nearly everyone dead, there weren’t nearly enough people left to work the fields.

The great Manors and Estates of feudal society were traditionally worked by serfs. Serfs were the lowest class of feudal society – the ones who did all the work. Miners, Millers, Lumberjacks, Farmers, Construction-Workers – if it was really hard work, and involved perspiration but not wearing armor, these guys were required to do it. In return for all this hard work, they got to work a little harder farming a little plot of land to keep themselves alive. And it was a crime for them to run away.

The Aristocracy, who owned all the land that the serfs were working, were to provide protection, and justice … protection because their estates wouldn’t make money if the serfs weren’t there to work the fields, and justice because it wouldn’t do to let the serfs kill each other off when disputes arose. In addition to protecting their serfs, the aristocracy were also required to contribute to the army of their own immediate superior, either monetarily, or by doing military service for a certain percentage of the year. Between the Serfs and the Aristocracy was a very, very, very small Middle Class, most of whom were tradesmen in the cities.  This was the Feudal System – and it’s the main reason the Dark Ages were, well, dark. There were basically 4 kinds of men: Lords, Churchmen, Serfs, and Tradesmen. (Obviously, there were also women, but it was illegal for them to have occupations, so, apart from the occasional supremely competent female aristocrat, like Eleanor of Aquitaine, their primary contribution was to produce more members of the father’s class.)

Feudalism was primarily a way of having military power without maintaining a standing army – and standing armies are bad, because A) they were expensive as long as you were paying them, and B) they were freaking dangerous the minute you didn’t!

Under Feudalism, each lord owned land, and possessed a Title, both bestowed by the lord above him. The catch? Every lord had to be either a soldier, or able to pay scutage – basically a tax for not being able to fulfill his military obligations. It made sense, at the time, because not everyone could be good at fighting, and the payment of scutage enabled High Lords and Kings to hire mercenaries who were good at fighting. (The mercenaries were landless knights – nobles who’d either been driven from their lands, had their titles revoked, or who’d been bankrupted and paid with their lands. They might also be younger sons of nobles who’d left all their lands to their elder children. Often enough these guys had been promised to the church, to keep them from attacking their more fortunate brothers, but had fled from that requirement … they were called “Erring Knights” … Knights Errant, in Norman-French.) These large bands of mercenaries called themselves “Free Companies” – a bit of a misnomer, as they were anything but free.

The Feudal Age was the age of the fully-armored knight – and only the wealthiest of people could become knights:  the cost of the cheapest weapons and armor that could be used by a knight was the same as the cost of a good-sized farm. And it wasn’t enough just to have armor, and a lance and sword – you had to have a war-horse, as well. Forget the Hollywood notion of a horse:  a Knight armed cap-a-pie, that is from head to foot, in plate-armor was pretty freaking heavy, and it took a damned strong horse to even move under such weight, let alone carry a knight into battle.  Worse, someone had gone and invented the stirrup, which kept the knight from falling off the damned horse, even when another knight, on another horse, was trying to knock him off with a lance.

Trouble was, the stirrup, and the high-backed, executive-type saddles they took to using, transferred the full shock of such an encounter to the poor horse’s back!  This was bad news for pretty much any ordinary horse – and fairly terrible news for the knight on his back, since it was really likely he’d be pinned-down by the weight of the dead animal, and utterly at the mercy of whatever common soldiers happened to be standing around on the ground anyway. What was needed was a freaking super-horse, or everyone was going to end up buried under dead horses, which is almost never a good way to win a battle.

They got busy breeding horses for strength – not necessarily for size, but for pure muscular power and strength of bone. Eventually, they ended up with three breeds which seemed pretty good at carrying knights: the Destrier, the Courser, and the Rouncey. Destriers seemed to be the best, and were certainly the rarest, and therefore most expensive – High Lords tended to keep these for themselves. The Courser was an all-around good choice for ordinary knights: powerful, not quite as ungodly expensive as the Destrier, and they seemed to have a lot of them – which was good, because the very best and most preferred method of bringing down a knight was still to kill his horse – whereupon the knight would be taken captive for ransom – meaning he’d eventually need another horse. Rouncey’s were pretty much what we’d consider very strong riding horses – perfectly suited for the lowest knights and men-at-arms, who wore lots less armor, and inexpensive enough that you could let a lot of them be slaughtered, along with their not-quite-top-drawer riders. They also made pretty fair pack-horses for hauling away the bodies of their former riders for burial.

I’ve mentioned before how enthusiastic humans can be about killing one another. Now, at the height of the Dark Ages, they had a system for producing knights without maintaining those expensive and dangerous standing armies; they had war-horses capable of carrying knights into battle, stirrups to keep them from falling off the horse, and all the latest pointy-slashy things for killing one another. Best of all, the guys in charge were heavily armored, and almost never got killed – and really had little cause to care if a lot of lower-class, under-armored types did get killed, so they really had no motivation to settle their differences over a pint. Better, the exciting new practice of holding people for ransom was such a good excuse for war, that they pretty much had a field day.

Later, when they’d seriously reduced the number of lower-class fighters at their disposal, they came up with something almost as good as a war: the Tournament.

Learning the skills of Knighthood was expensive and time-consuming, and, if there weren’t enough underlings around to have a good old-fashioned war, you needed some way of providing battle experience for men and horses – look, horses, if not the most intelligent animals on earth, still had a pair of perfectly good eyes, and reacted pretty much the way anyone would, on spying a wall of other horses, carrying guys with pointy things, on their backs. Dodge City wouldn’t be invented for several more centuries, but the concept of “Get the Hell Out of Dodge!” was an old and time-honored tradition simply waiting around for something snappy to call it … in the meantime, knights would have to settle for calling it “being borne away”, or “retreating”, the difference between the two being whether it was the horse’s idea, or the rider’s.

A tournament was a sort of fake war, and came in 3 parts:  the Joust, the Melee, and the peasant games.

The Joust pitted one knight against another – good experience for a horse, who probably couldn’t imagine a thousand of those guys on the other side, and who would therefore be gently broken-in to the idea of enforced military service.  The usual rules were that knights got three passes at one another … they got one point for breaking a lance on the other guy, two points for striking him on the helm, and three points if they knocked the guy off his horse – or broke it’s poor back. Usually, the loser’s horse and arms were forfeited to the victor – who, not usually needing more armor, would often ransom it back to it’s former owner (while keeping the nicest bits for himself.)  The rate was often less to do with the value of the horse and armor, per se, and more about the Feudal rank of the loser, since, after all, an Earl could afford a higher ransom than an ordinary knight – and might consider it offensive if he were ransomed for the price of a lesser noble. Undeniably, he might also take offense if the ransom was too high. Holding a high Lord for ransom was a delicate thing, therefore, which could often leave hard-feelings in it’s wake. It became the practice to forfeit matches against high Lords to avoid this unpleasantness, which pissed off the high Lords, because they wanted to have some fun, too, not to mention wanting their share of the ransoms. Certain high Lords began showing up to joust incognito – and were surprised to find that their exceptionally fine Horse and Armor gave them away!

Well, damn.

The second part of a tournament, the Melee, was a mock battle.  You get roughly equal numbers of knights on a side, they get to charge once with a lance, and then things devolved to hacking, slashing, or clubbing, depending on whether you favored an axe, a sword, or a mace. There were usually some safety regulations:  a knight who was forced out of bounds, or against the tourney wall, if there was one, was considered defeated, and the ransoming could begin (there were judges to decide if one guy got all the ransom, or if he had to split it with others.)  A knight who was injured or likely to become injured could surrender, by throwing down his arms – except that a melee could be a damned confusing thing, and those helmets were hard to see through and “oops, I seem to have cut off your head – are you alright?”

The modern signal of holding ones empty hands up was quickly adopted to prevent this sort of embarrassing circumstance.

The melee was almost as good as a war – except sadly lacking in the traditional raping and pillaging that went along with real warfare.  When snide comments began to be made implying that “Tournament Knights” weren’t as manly as actual warrior knights, the tourney guys decided what the hell, and often invaded the nearby town and pillaged and raped, there. This outraged the warriors, since the tourney guys hadn’t actually gone to the trouble of conquering the town, and eventually the Pope got involved with a Bull saying the tourney guys had to stop.

Given how very unlikely it was that the Pope would actually show up at one of these things, though, the raping and pillaging pretty much continued, somewhat ameliorated by the occasional payment of damages to the Lord of the town.  There is no record of any of this gold making it’s way down to the people who got raped/pillaged, but no system is perfect.

The third portion of the tournament was entirely for the lower classes, already pretty pumped about seeing a bunch of aristocrats kicking one another’s asses without any of the usual carnage among peasant foot troops.  The games included all the sorts of things that could exercise a yeoman’s battle skills, so as to better prepare him for slaughter/slaughtering, once the aristocracy got back to having wars.  There was boxing, bouts of quarter-staff, bucklers, which was a sort of sword-play using a short sword and a light shield, darts, stone casts, and tossing the caber, among the scots, which basically involved throwing a telephone-pole (long before they were invented). (When pressed for a description of how this particular skill might be used in battle, the scots will typically glower and bash their questioner with something considerably smaller and harder than a telephone-pole, leading one to assume that the point of caber-tossing is to lure unwary foes into asking smart-ass questions.)

The best part of the games was the Archery competition, where all the most famous archers (poachers) of the region showed up to shoot, and where, if you were lucky, King John would make fun of a particular archer, who would then do some amazing feat of archery, because he was really Robin Hood.

The Black Death screwed all that up.

Most of the serfs were dead. Most of the Middle-Class, who lived in the cities, were also dead. Many of the Aristocrats were dead, too. Everyone who was not dead, got wealthier, by inheritance – except that the Aristocrats counted their wealth by tilled acreage – and there were remarkably fewer people left to do all that tilling. The ones that were there had more money than they’d ever had before, and suddenly found themselves in possession of something that most of them had never had before: bargaining power.

If the aristocrats wanted that tilling done, they were going to have to make some changes: it was a crime for the serfs to leave their lands, but that was exactly what they were threatening to do if they didn’t get their way. The punishment for serfs deserting their manor had always been death, but killing them didn’t seem like much of an option:  most of them had seen so much death in the Plague that the idea didn’t impress them much – and dead men can’t till fields.

First, they wanted their freedom – basically, they wanted it to be legal to do what they were threatening to do – that is, seek jobs in the cities, if they couldn’t get a good deal on the farm. Again, the outraged nobles considered enforcing the law – but a) the serfs hadn’t run off, yet, and b) that would still leave the damned fields untilled.

Next, the serfs demanded raises: without their labor, the aristocrats were broke, so they’d have to cough up more dough to keep the laborers laboring. More than one land-lord bitterly complained about the outrageousness of this behavior – and then coughed-up because the fields still weren’t getting tilled, and half the serfs from the next manor had run off to the cities to become tradesmen.

This was pretty much the beginning of the end for Feudalism. The lower class started getting all uppity. The Middle Class found themselves able to charge much more for things than they could have gotten away with before – and all that money started to get spent on stuff the Middle Class ought not to have! People were going out and buying clothes as nice as the Lords were wearing. They were buying food, and wine as good as that at the Lord’s table. With burgeoning wealth comes an increase in crime, so the middle classes began to arm themselves – something the aristocracy had previously reserved exclusively to themselves.

Aristocrats tended to be better educated than the lower and middle classes.  This might not extend to reading, but it did extend to math, and it really didn’t take a genius to figure out there were FAR more peasants than lords, and if the peasants could have weapons, they could pretty much have anything else they might decide they wanted!

Gulp.

Arms control is not a modern idea. Americans tend to be big opponents because it’s built-in to the Constitution – but very few Americans know why.  The reason is simply that for centuries European Lords had kept the populace under control by forbidding them to have weapons.  Those laws were already old in Feudal days, but the post-plague craze for arms and luxuries stimulated a renewal of these laws that went a little overboard.

A New Religion

(The following is an excerpt from my soon-to-be-released book, Messed-Up! ©2015 Scott Davis, All Rights Reserved to Author)

In the first century of the Common Era (which used to be the Christian era, before a whole lot of other people objected to the fact that it was intolerant of their religion, and everyone agreed to use the word “common” instead, and everyone also agreed to ignore the fact that the era began with the birth of Christ), the Roman Procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, rubber-stamped the crucifixion of a wandering preacher who’d been proven guilty of ‘Telling people to love God and be nice to each other’. Pilate hadn’t been happy about it, but the Priests of the Jewish Sanhedrin had been insistent. Jesus, himself, hadn’t been any help, refusing to admit to any crime, while also refusing to oppose his own execution. To Pilate, this seemed yet another version of the whole “Damned if you do, and Damned if you don’t” controversy.  Eventually, Pilate washed his hands of the affair (literally), (opting for ‘Damned if you Do’ out of moral cowardice,) and ordered the Crucifixion that the Sanhedrin and their howling mob were howling for.

After Jesus was dead, there were various events which could be interpreted as signs that God was pretty unhappy about something – and a number of Jesus’ followers pointed out that it might NOT be a coincidence that all these events happened right after the Rabbi gave up the ghost.

Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Sanhedrin, realized that it was the eve of the Passover Sabbath – and Jewish custom forbade leaving dead bodies unburied during such a time.  He therefore went to Pilate, mentioned that he had a nice new tomb, and asked (nicely) for permission to take Jesus down from the cross. Contrary to Jewish custom, it was Roman policy to leave executed criminals hanging till they rotted, or the crucifix was needed for the next customer – but Pilate had been really uncomfortable ordering the execution, and Caesar had ordered him to be more tolerant of Jewish customs, so he eventually agreed that Joseph could take the body.

The Sabbath was considered to begin at sundown, which was fast approaching, so Joseph enlisted the assistance of another Sanhedrin member, Nicodemus, and hurriedly pulled Jesus down off the cross, and transported him to the nearby tomb, where they made haste to wrap the body in a fine shroud of linen, and rolled an enormous stone in front of the tomb.  After the Holy days were ended, they’d send the women of Jesus’ following to wash the body, and anoint it with spices in preparation for the actual burial.

When the Passover was completed, 3 days after the execution, Jesus’ Mother, his Aunt, and Mary Magdalen, made their way to the tomb, with everything they’d need to prepare the body – except that there was no body!  We have four different accounts of this event, and none of them agree on all of the details – but all of them do agree that Jesus wasn’t in his tomb, but the linens he’d been wrapped in were.

Skipping over the fact that, wherever the hell he was, he was naked, the ladies quickly realized that the salient point was that the Master was gone!  They hustled back to where the Disciples were laying low, told their story, and everyone pretty much freaked out.

Subsequently there was a rash of Jesus-sightings (miraculously clothed) – including one pretty awkward one for the Disciple Thomas.  Thomas had declared that he’d believe in the risen Jesus when he could poke his fingers into the man’s wounds – only to have Jesus actually show up, and insist that Thomas knock himself out! (There is no record that Thomas actually obeyed this command – presumably, the fact that the wounds were, in fact, still open, grossed everyone out enough to not insist.) Eventually, after 40 days of this, Jesus was taken up into heaven, after commanding his disciples to spread the gospel far and wide.

First, however, they had to deal with finding a replacement for Judas Iscariot, the Disciple who had betrayed Jesus, then off’d himself.

The Acts of the Apostles, which is the book of the New Testament where these things are recorded, really doesn’t explain why it was necessary to find another disciple.  It’s true that there are certain numerological oddities that crop up, over and over and over in the Bible.  It’s also true that the number twelve was one of these, and  that Jesus had chosen twelve apostles. A final truth was, with the loss of Judas, they were down to eleven and a new guy was essential to bring them back up to full quota.

Don’t look like that. You may not be a numerologist, but the ancient Israelites damned well were!  The numbers 1,3,4,7, 12, and 40 appear over and over again in both the Old and New Testaments, and were considered to some degree ‘holy’.  Examples include 1 God … 3 aspects of God (the Trinity) … 4 Living creatures stationed at each of the 4 corners of the throne of God, and they have 4 wings and 4 faces … 6 days to create the Earth, plus 1 to rest, equals 7 days to a week … 7 Churches in the Book of Revelations … 12 tribes of Israel … and, finally, 12 apostles, and “oh, crap, now we only have 11, so we’d better break out the dice and get God to weigh in on this whole thing!”

If the numerological explanation doesn’t do it for you, Acts does quote Peter, considered the head-apostle, as giving a speech regarding an obscure prophesy which could be interpreted to mean they needed a replacement disciple. Everyone talked it out, narrowed down the choices to two guys who’d been with Jesus from his baptism to his crucifixion, and called upon God to choose between them. Then they threw some dice, and declared that God had chosen a fellow by the name of Mathias.

New religions, like new restaurants, begin on very shaky foundations, and are often very fragile.  Christianity certainly was:  from the beginning, it held the ire of the Jewish Sanhedrin – the High Council of Priests which had connived to have Jesus executed in the first place. Prominent among the members of the Sanhedrin were the Pharisees, a sect of fanatics who had spent three years trying to trip Jesus up.  As far as they were concerned, Christians were rogue Jews who blasphemed the faith by claiming the long-awaited Messiah had already come and gone – even worse, they declared that the Pharisees had missed it!

By God, that was going too far!!!

Saul of Tarsus was a well-educated, strictly-raised Pharisee. The new, radical sect of Christianity horrified and enraged him – Christians, after all, were telling everyone that Christ was not just the Messiah of Hebrew prophesy, but the actual Son of God! It was blasphemous, and, like all hyper-fanatical religious types, he couldn’t just stand by and wait for God to judge and punish them – he figured it was his duty (as a hyper-fanatical religious type) to judge them himself (he didn’t actually believe in Jesus, at the time, and had therefore not really paid attention to the Master’s exhortation to “Judge not, lest ye be judged”.)  Once he had judged them, he’d see to it that they got dragged before the Sanhedrin, which would take care of punishing them – just as they had done for Jesus.

None of this was his actual job, per se – technically, his profession was “Tent-Maker” – but someone had to make sure these blasphemers got taken care of, and, since no one else seemed ready to do it, he decided he’d step up. He became a professional Christian-Persecutor, and wow, was he ever good at it! Saul was Darth Vader to the Christian’s Rebel Alliance – and, like Darth Vader, he had a life-changing experience, not at the hands of a light-saber wielding kid protecting his sister, but, while minding his own business (for once) on the road to Damascus.

Part way there, he was accosted by the resurrected Christ – who was a little upset that Saul hadn’t cut his Disciples any slack. In the course of the conversation, Saul was blinded, then allowed to continue his way to Damascus. This was not at all an easy thing to do while blind, but he managed it, finding people to lead him by the hand to town where he secured lodgings. On the third day of his blindness, Ananias of Damascus showed up.

Ananias, apparently a fervent new Christian, explained that Jesus had sent him to restore Saul’s sight, and baptize him.  His sight restored, Saul, perhaps a little embarrassed at the ruckus he’d been kicking up, changed his name to Paul and decided to make up for being an asshole toward Christians, by being an asshole on behalf of Christians. Before long, he’d started an all-out war with Peter over just whom to preach the gospel to, had written reams of brand new Christian dogma (eventually totaling fourteen of the twenty-seven books of the new testament), and had ticked off both the Jews of Antioch, the Church Fathers in Jerusalem, and, eventually, women, world-wide!

Apart from the road to Damascus, there is NO conclusive evidence that Paul had ever even met Jesus – let alone followed him around for three years soaking up his teachings and parables!  Not to mention the fact that this guy had not only been advocating a lynching, but had been prepared to sell the rope for it as well! Peter and the other disciples were, at best, unconvinced of Paul’s authority to decide such sweepingly important issues of the religion they had founded, and which he had always opposed!

Unlike Saul, however, they had actually heard Jesus’ sermon regarding non-judgmentalism, and, regretfully, let him have his say.

Paul decided that you didn’t have to be Jewish to be Christian – an important advance, because Peter, who’d been left in charge by Jesus, had been insisting that new arrivals did have to convert to Judaism first. It might not seem to be a big deal to you, but conversion to Judaism meant becoming circumcised, and the vast majority of men felt that maybe their souls didn’t need salvation if it meant an operation on their privates in the days before anesthetics!

Paul declared it had been revealed to him that the life and death of Jesus had fulfilled all of the old covenants of Judaism – and, since circumcision was the sign of those covenants, newly converted Christians could save both their souls and their foreskins!

Just when everyone was expecting Peter to go postal on Paul, the former announced that he’d had a dream which had instructed him that it was really ok, and Gentiles could become Christians without first becoming Jews.  This was little comfort to the ones who’d already done it Peter’s original way, of course.

It is, perhaps, no coincidence that ‘peter’ would eventually become a slang expression for ‘penis’.

(Circumcision, DID,however, offer protection against certain diseases, so the custom of circumcising babies – who were unable to object – continued.)

Once their penises were declared to be safe, people began to be converted by the thousand, all over Asia Minor (modern Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey.) Soon the Disciples made inroads in parts of Greece, the old lands of Carthage in north Africa and southern Spain, all around the city of Massilia, in southern France (modern Marseilles), and a freaking huge contingent around Rome itself.

The Romans weren’t happy about it. For starters, these wackos were preaching ‘niceness’ – something fundamentally at odds with Roman culture! Worse, they were preaching only one God – Rome had a whole Pantheon of Gods, including every Emperor, and these guys were claiming they were all false! The only way the Empire could function, being an amalgam of conquered territories, was to practice tolerance for all religions: religion could, after all, stir up armed resistance faster than anything else known to man!  Pretty much the only effective way to govern far off territories was to permit them to keep their beliefs, traditions, and culture. Convince them that they were all a part of the empire. The Christians and Jews, in refusing to accept anyone else’s religion as valid, seemed to the Romans to be the very height of intolerance and bad politics! Apart from which, if the Romans hadn’t allowed the Jews their religious freedom, Christianity could never have gotten started at all!  Finally, the ungrateful bastards insisted on gathering together for “Prayer Meetings”, to which only Christians or prospective Christians were invited – and the gods only knew what sort of seditions they were plotting!

By the time of Nero, Christians were being persecuted as a matter of course.  When the great fire of Rome broke out, Nero used them as scapegoats, and began rounding them up. He had some dipped in oil, tied to posts and set on fire, to light his horse-races, fed others to Lions in the Coliseum, and is reputed to have ordered the executions of both Peter and Paul – the one by upside-down crucifixion, and the other by beheading. (Paul was given this fairly painless execution because he had been born a Citizen of Rome. There are a variety of historical sources which claim that Nero had NOT, in fact, ordered either man executed – but there’s ample evidence that Nero was not at all a nice person, and probably found the preaching of ‘being nice’ to be anathema, so fuck him!)

This sort of thing continued for a couple of centuries – but persecution has never really discouraged Christianity from spreading. Slowly, Christians began to have more and more influence until at last, Emperor Constantine decided “What the Hell”, and legalized it. At first, this was simply a matter of granting Christianity the same validity under Roman law that any other recognized religion possessed. And, at first, the Christians seemed content:  the Empire, and the Emperor, were seen as promoting and enforcing the Pax Deorum (the Peace of God). In return for Christain endorsement, Constantine built cathedrals all over the Roman Empire – the most important, of course, being St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This caused Christianity to spread faster than a dirty rumor – even to the farthest fringes of Europe!

When various Christian prelates began arguing over dogma, Constantine summoned the First Council of Nicaea. He invited all 1800 Christian Bishops – but only about 300 actually showed up (mostly from the Eastern Empire: some time before, it had been decided that the Empire was too big to be managed by a single ruler, so it had split into a Western Empire with one ruler, and an Eastern Empire with another. Constantine had fought several civil wars to unify the entire thing again, under his rule – a policy, which, sadly, was sabotaged by his insistence on moving the capital of the empire to his own city in the Eastern Empire: Constantium.) Constantine promised the attendees free transport to and from the council, allowed the Bishops to each bring a couple of priests and three deacons, and put all of these people up at his own expense.

It was the very first religious convention.

At Nicaea, the bishops shouted at each other, swore at each other, called one another heretic, nearly drank the town’s wine-cellars dry, and basically behaved like heathens – important traditions still honored to this day by many Christian denominations during their conventions. Over time, though, the Bishops at Nicaea slowly began to make progress. They selected which books would be contained in the canon of the Bible, which would be considered apocryphal, and which would be considered heretical.  While they were at it, they hammered out various doctrinal points, so that, for the first time since Jesus himself, Christians had a formal “creed” or set of teachings, referred to as the ‘Nicene Creed’. They fixed the dates of Holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, decided on the structure of the Church, addressed two off-shoot sects, decided on how heretics and schismatics could be allowed back into the church, and set standards for everything from communion to baptism. In the process, they condemned the existence of the Gnostic Gospels as heresy, confirming the Judgement of an earlier council at Antioch.

As Christianity spread, the Church and its Bishops gathered more and more power – and it is not the way of the powerful to remain content with less than everything.

The Empire became divided into Eastern and Western Empires, again, with separate Emperors, and in both of them, the next few Emperors ping-ponged back and forth between Paganism and Christianity.  Finally, Emperor Theodosius briefly reunited the Empires, and declared Christianity the State Religion, removing the shrine of Victory from the Senate, extinguishing the Sacred Flame of the Vestals and evicting them from their Temple, then banning the Olympic Games in Greece.

That’s about when the wheels came off the wagon.

The Senate protested. The Vestals protested. The Greeks protested. The Christians exulted. Theodosius declared Illegal all other cults and ordered their Temples closed – and an orgy of looting and burning began: the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the Serapeum in Alexandria were especially prominent casualties – Delphi being home to some awesome statuary (which got burned), and the Serapeum being the last remnant of the Great Library of Alexandria (also burned.)

Meanwhile, Theodosius was busy wrecking his empire’s military might – first by trying (and failing) to fight off the Gothic Tribes attacking the Empire from the North, and then by defeating (just barely) two separate internal rebellions. In the end, the Empires separated again, never to rejoin.

As for the Goths, their chieftain, Alaric, invaded Italy twice, was defeated twice, and decided maybe it’d be a good idea to stay home during the next invasion. The General who defeated him, it began to be whispered, had made a deal with him – a rumor that pissed-off the Western Emperor, Honorius.  In retaliation, Honorius ordered the execution of the General and his entire family. Not content with that, Honorius next incited the Roman people to rise up and murder the wives and children of thousands upon thousands of Goths serving in the Roman Army!

The Goths were … upset.