Of course not all religions are like that and the point about arrogance is fair. But at one time there was a corner of the movement dedicated to the notion that without the excuses people were using to deny science, shove women back into the kitchen, and drop bombs on the Middle East, we could be better. Needless to say the right wing atheists suckered them to build their influence and then drove them out, and this is the result. But that the truth might set us free was a real idea at one point and I feel sad for those who put hope in it.
ETA: in the late aughts, the New Atheism was sweeping through my circle. I wish I had those words back then. I was annoyed at my friends who actually didn’t have any science training talking about how unscientific things were going to be the death of us all. The best I could say was “‘Unscientific’ is most of life, and it’s not a good predictor for what’ll help you and what won’t.” That’s not catchy.
Luckily, a wise and articulate friend took one look at the writings of the leading lights of the movement and said “These ‘secular humanists’ know there’s two words in that title, right? Not just ‘secular’?'”
Today’s “this asshole again” is dedicated to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
I could never work as part of our customer service staff here in the library. They put up with so much! I would end up going off on someone within the first few hours. Today I stopped by the front desk to discuss an issue with a co-worker, but she was already engaged with a patron, so I stood back and waited.
This patron had a rapid fire short attention span and in the roughly two minutes I waited drifted from modern phones, to older graphing calculators, to her son stealing those calculators from other students so he could sell them for drug money, and on to her son dying from an overdose over 17 years ago.
Let me be clear here: I have a lot of sympathy for this woman’s situation. I can’t imagine how that must have torn her up and I can well understand how such a thing probably fucks you up for the rest of your own life. I’d also like to be clear that the patron is not the asshole I’m angry about here, although the next step in her conversational fire hose made me jump to that conclusion for a moment.
Her next stop, and the one that made me need to leave the area immediately, was her praise for Kristi Noem and the dog murder’s warnings about the dangers of Fentanyl and repeating the same bullshit we’ve heard about it forever now, including the report that would have a single drug seizure saving about 3.5 times the population of the USA. Once she started down that particular path, I decided my conversation with my co-worker could wait.
So yeah, I’m not going to tear into the poor woman that lost her son to horrible circumstances, but I absolutely will go after the asshole that’s spouting false information that influences vulnerable people like her. Noem is even more of an asshole for preying on people like this poor grieving mother.
I still think I did the right thing by heading back to my office, though. I know better than to open my own mouth in that set of circumstances!
A-Dearth-of-wits should move to Israel and join the IDF and nosh on the best pierogis. Still–given the population density of Jews there–his chance of bumping into anti-Semitic Jews would actually increase.
