But this one was totally awesome. I think you nailed it.
I was 7 years old in the summer of 1969.
I remember very clearly laying back on a swing in the playground where we lived in NYC and looking up at the Moon and saying "there are 2 people walking on that RIGHT NOW!!!" My father, who was a journalist, made sure that we kids watched the moon landing, and the first steps. One of those was at like 4am, and I remember being excited about him waking me up to watch it. Dad also happened to have purchased tickets for the family to go a little Arts and Music festival a couple of weeks later upstate in Woodstock. We had been there the summer before, and he heard that this year there were going to be some great bands playing, so he bought tickets. Naturally, we didn't go because the New York State Thruway was closed, man! But he kept those tickets in his desk drawer for years. I don't know what happened to them.
The point is - I have come to believe that the summer of 1969 was the peak of human evolution (at least thus far), and we've been sliding backwards ever since. And largely because of the people and attitudes that you are talking about here. In fact, I have come to believe that the religious types among the conservatives you discuss would much rather, and have even set out to, destroy the entire planet and everyone and everything on it rather than have their view of god and the cosmos proved wrong.
And I have also come to believe that it is time to ignore, marginalize, laugh at and generally remove any power they have to do much of anything but breathe and eat. And here's the thing - There really aren't all that many of them. There are a lot of people sucked into their orbit, who go along with it and don't really question the prevailing attitudes, but as far as the hard-core, anti-science, Creationist, twisted Conservative? Maybe 10-15 percent of the population? And then another 20-25 percent who CAN be changed. I've seen it with my own eyes. You just get them away from hard-core Cons, and they're happy to be happy for once.
There were a couple of threads yesterday about Gretchen Carlson from Fox News complaining that Festivus, among other things, is persecuting Christians by "helping 'erode' America’s 'heritage' and 'strip(ping) our society of certain things that have been in existence for a long time.'"
And to that I say... Let's do it!!! Let's move on from traditions that at best, make no sense, and at worst are harmful. Yes... Let's persecute the Christians! (and I mean the fake ones, the Leviticans, not the ones who actually do try to emulate Christ) It's time to ignore, marginalize, laugh at and generally remove any power they have, so that the rest of us can move on with evolution and get to the stars. Unfortunately, for them and their twisted worldview, it will mean that their conception of god and the universe will be proven false. But to the rest of us, that's not a big deal. We'll have a new idea of god and the universe, and then that will change as we get new information.
Because that's what smart people do. Grow. And change. We've let the dumb people control the conversation since about 1970. It's time to stop.
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