Old Lives Matter

My new rallying cry is, “Old lives Matter.” It is, of course, ironic, and, even if it were not, it would be one of those religious truths – something to which you aspire in spite of its not being factually true, like, “All men are created equal.”  Old lives matter less to the fourth reich than George Floyd’s life mattered to Derek Chauvin. But it is becoming clear that the demographic that prompted the Supreme Court to create the protected class of age will become a primary target of the deplorables, as well all other protected classes. In a recent online discussion, I read a MAGA who seemed to think of his demographic as the, “Christian right.” But, of course, the fourth reich has nothing to do with Christian anything; It has to do with their true religion of unfettered free market capitalism and adoration of the stupidity of conservatism. Those of us who worship at the altar of post enlightenment humanism are being pummeled from all sides by this artifact of the origins of life. 

For some time now I’ve been most offended by the idiots who considered themselves members of a collective they call, “Atheists.”

Atheism was once just a collection of assumptions made by people of a scientific bent, but I realized six months before I turned 60, when my director at Blue Shield of California, Michael the psychopath, decided to retire me, that atheism had been coopted into a religion. From the YouTube videos I watched at the time, it was organized primarily by the former evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, and the late journalist Christopher Hitchens. You could tell it was a religion for them because they sought to eliminate all  its competition and because they abandoned all other contributions they would make to history in favor of advancing the cause of atheism. They would basically become zombies in service to their religion. You can still watch this happen in videos that plague YouTube. The most tragic loss from this zombie apocalypse was the loss of Professor Dawkins, who was a brilliant evolutionary scientist. He had first suggested the idea that the struggle for survival in natural selection occurred at the level of the gene. This was an unprecedented perspective that promised to save us from the ultimate tragedy of non intelligent design. Unfortunately, it occurred at the precise moment in history when intelligent design was displacing natural selection and so the conservative approach to survival could only be taken by organisms  like corona viruses, that could afford to cycle through generations at an unnatural rate. The rest of us would have to hitch our wagons to the intelligence of liberalism. Alas, enter Donald Trump and his legions of conservatives. If they lack the intelligence to see that the message of Christianity is absolute liberalism and inclusion ( ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, …’) what hope is there that they will believe in Global warming or Old Lives Matter?  And so, for the election this week, the Republicans have been warming up the crematoria for those of us dependent on Social Security and Medicare. 

We have one day left before the United States electorate signs a death warrant on a movement to secure  human dignity that began with the Magna Carta over half a millennium ago. The idiocy of conservatism that began with the origins of life will end with its evisceration. If you would like some succor in the midst of this Armageddon, the best I can offer you is that the suffering that led to the plaintive cries for help like George Floyd’s desperate pleas for breath; Black Lives Matter, Me Too, and, now, Old Lives Matter; will be exorcised by it as well.

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