Religion and the Killing of Innocents

This is not a post about the current situation in the Middle East. This is about the religious roots of the recent events in Ferguson, MO. I am not saying that the killing of Michael Brown was directly motivated by religion. I see it as a somewhat racist event. Why would a white policeman feel it necessary to shoot an unarmed black man six times in order to stop a perceived threat other than the fact that he was black?

In order to see some of the religious roots of racism in America, one needs to
look back into history. When the slave trade began, the whites who bought the slaves already looked upon people with differently colored skin as less than human or otherwise inferior to themselves. Since this was to be their labor pool for the manpower hungry agriculture the were doing, they needed to teach them english. They also went about forcibly converting the slaves to their brand of christianity in order to "civilize" them. Of course they used the bible verses that backed up their worldview that the slaves were inferior, and that god wanted them to be slaves and do what they were told.
After a century of this kind of brainwashing and indoctrination, the slaves were set free. Now the whites faced a problem. They could either accept the blacks as equals and go against what they had been taught for generations, or continue to oppress the blacks and continue teaching their children that they were the superior race because "god said so". They took the second option because it was much easier to continue what they knew instead of thinking for themselves and changing their worldview. Meanwhile the blacks learned to read and found the verses in the bible that contradicted what they had been taught by their former masters. The began to demand equal treatment. It took a hundred more years to bring about equality in the law, and we are not done with that task.

The divisions that christianity in America makes today are far more subtle, but one only needs to look at the white extremists who say that god is on their side to know that the religious roots of racism are still there. It is part of the reason that black men in particular are seen as dangerous by many whites in this country.

Been busy

Although waiting is a big part of the job, sometimes a truck driver has
no time for anything. The past three weeks sent me from the Philadelphia
area to Chicago to Los Angeles to northern Utah to South Carolina to
Florida to Indianapolis. Now I am in Ohio between Columbus and
Cleveland, headed towards Schenectady, New York. I get to see alot of
the country. I see all the tourist attractions as I drive by, never
having enouth time to stop and take them in. Maybe when I retire I will
go back and see some of the things I can only drive past now.

The Hobby Lobby Decision

I have pondered for a while on what I should say about this. The Supreme
Court handed down its decision in this case, allowing closely held
corporations to hide behind the RFRA when they want to ignore certain
portions of the ACA. I am concerned that these corporations will now try
to push the boundaries of that ruling.

Since it is health care, their first step would be to deny spousal
coverage to same-sex couples where it is legal for them to be married.
That would take care of the two most important social issues for the
religious right, gay marriage and the bodily autonomy of women. But
then, they would begin to push out of the health care arena to other
aspects of life. Would we see them hire a chaplain and then make chapel
services mandatory for thousands of employees? After all, their holy
book says that they must share their beliefs with all the world. A
corporation owned by muslims could then require all female employees to
wear the hijab and never speak to any man unless spoken to first. Can
you imagine the outcry from that?

The flaw is in the RFRA. The goal of that law when it was passed was
laudable. Its intintion is to make sure that the government has a
compelling reason to restrict the religious rights of and individual.
Key word: individual. Thanks to unintended consequences, corporations
are now held to be individuals with respect to the RFRA. It now does not
matter that allowing a corporation to exercise its religious freedoms
can restrict the religious freedoms of millions. The solution is to
repeal the RFRA, or at the very least, replace it with something that
defines religious freedom as belonging to individual people living in
the country.

The accident in New Jersey

I suppose I should weigh in on the accident in New Jersey that was
allegedly the fault of a tired trucker. I am sure there will be calls to
restrict trucks even more than they are now in order to keep those big
dangerous things away from people. Reports are that the driver was
fatigued. It has been said that he had been awake for 24 hours prior to
the crash. It is possible. It is also possible that the driver of the
limousine was more at fault. It is also possible that it was unavoidable
by anyone involved.

I saw a comment concerning this incident, someone thought that the 70-82
hours a week that we drive is just insane. This person seems to think
that the maximum possible hours that are available for driving are
always used driving. I get a restart on my hours maybe once a month, at
the end of each day the hours that I either drove or spent otherwise on
duty from eight days prior are added to my clock. I very rarely end up
using every minute of that 70 hours during one week. As I write this, I
only have 6.5 hours left for driving. I must stop by around 7 pm central
time today because of another part of the rules that dictates how much I
can do in a day before shutting down for 10 hours. Most of the truckers
out here will follow the rules. Trucking is a very safe industry.

If the person who beleives we should cut back the hours we can drive
thought it through, they would realize that it would make the roads more
dangerous and more congested because we would need twice as many trucks
to deliver all the things that make the country go.

I feel that everyone who gets a driver's license should be required to
ride with a trucker for a week so they can understand just what it takes
to handle a truck. Maybe then, they would not complain about trucks in
the way and automatically blame the trucker in an accident.

More signs in the South

Today, I was driving through Alabama and Mississippi. Today was primary
day in Alabama, so I saw a large number of political signs. Nearly all
of them were promoting various Republican party candidates. No surprise
there. Not even surprising that a few of them were supporting the
re-elecion of Justice Moore.

However, there were a few signs that were a bit disturbing. These signs
were reminding people of the voter id law. In Alabama (as well as
several other states) one must present a government issued photo id in
order to be allowed to vote. The right wing supporters of laws like that
will tell you that the purpose is to prevent fraud at the polling place.
I have never heard of an actual case of fraud at the polling place.

The real reason is mainly to prevent as many minorities from voting as
possible. The billboards simply stated "you must have photo id to vote"
in very large letters. The message was accompanied by an image of an
attractive young black woman holding out an id card. The message is
clear. If you are a minority, don't bother trying to vote unless you
play by the white man's rules.

The other signs that I found a little off-putting were the ones for
various locally owned motels. They emphasized the fact that they were
"American owned". It is probably a safe bet to say that these motel
owners were white, overwhelmingly religious, and politically
conservative. They are advertising that they do not originally come from
some other place like India or Pakistan. They do not really understand
that the Indians and Pakistanis have likely been in the US long enough
to have become citizens, and are therefore just as American as they are.
It is even possible that these "non-american" owners are second
generation, having been born here to immigrant parents. Every single
white person in the South is either an immigrant or has immigrant
ancestry. This is hypocrisy. This is the subtle but pervasive racism to
be encountered in the American South.

On christian privelege

I am sitting at a truck stop in Alabama to make a delivery tomorrow.
Alabama is the home of Justice Roy Moore, the man who seems to feel it
is perfectly ok to put a 3 ton granite slab bearing the ten commandments
on the courthouse lawn. He truly cannot understand why that violates the
First Amendment. Mr Moore and his supporters appear to believe that the
First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion means that a person is
allowed to choose which denomination of christianity they will follow.

They will see any effort to bring some equality in how religion and
nonreligion are treated by the government as persecution of christians.
They cannot see that the so-called persecution is only removing the
favored and privileged status that their belief system enjoys.

In my last post, I proposed adjusting the holiday at the end of December
to a specific day of the week in order to eliminate the christian
privilege inherent in a government holiday for christmas. They will see
that as an attack on the foundations of our government, as well as an
attempt to eliminate god from the public sphere. They do not understand
that I don't care what religious things they do. In fact, I would
encourage them to continue celebrating christmas. It is a major part of
their belief system, and who am I to prohibit that? All I want is for
the government to end the priveleges that christianity has over all
others, religious and nonreligious alike.

Holidays

When Easter came and went last month, I started to think about religious
holidays. Specifically, I began to wonder why the federal government
observed them. The First Amendment requires that no religious holiday
should be mandated by the government. So I checked the list of federal
holidays, and discovered that the only religious holiday the government
actually observes is Christmas.

Since Christmas is a christian holiday, this means that the government
is promoting christianity. I would like that to stop. I have nothing
against the christians celebrating their holidays, but the government
has no business promoting it.

This brings me to the "war on Christmas" baloney that is trotted out by
the likes of Bill O'Reilly every December. They all seem to think that
being more inclusive and recognizing that other cultures and other
religions have holidays around that same time of year is somehow
undermining and attempting to get rid of their holiday. They will even cry
"persecution". It is not persecution to remove christianity's
privileged position, and treat them as all others are treated.

I would like to propose a way to eliminate Christmas from the federal
holiday calendar. When the First Amendment argument is brought up as a
reason for eliminating the holiday, I am sure that there will be
objections. The most valid one is that the holiday itself has become
secularized to the point that most who are not christian celebrate it.
It will also be said that it is tradition and therefore should remain.
So, I propose that the holiday be renamed on the federal calendar to
"Winter Holiday". It should also be moved to the fourth friday in
December, instead of always being on the 25th. This would keep the
holiday available for the traditional celebrations that christian and
non-christian alike share. It also makes it more efficient for the
federal offices that would be affected.

As an added bonus, it would greatly increase productivity at private
employers. Since most employers follow the federal calendar to varying
degrees when determining their own holiday schedules, this would make
the winter holiday a three day weekend, even when the 25th is in the
middle of the week. No more juggling the floating holidays around to
accommodate the day of the w
eek on which Christmas falls. Of course,
private employers would still be free to observe Christmas directly.

There is precedent in federal law for moving a holiday from it's
traditional date to a specific day of the week. The Uniform Holidays Act
of 1968 adjusted Washington's birthday, Memorial Day, and Columbus Day
from their traditional dates to a specific day of the week.