Resolving human problems together
I received a lot of " let's do Hanukah and Xmas together and be friends" messages yesterday.
The US is the most religious and fundamentalist country on the planet, so the starting place for joint work to return to a culture we can all respect is to attack the roots of religious extremism. A logical first step in this process would be yo hold clergy liable if a member of their congregation commits a violent crime. If you claim you’re a shepherd, make money from your vocation, and one of your sheep goes stray, you go to jail too.
The US is the most religious and fundamentalist country on the planet, so the starting place for joint work to return to a culture we can all respect is to attack the roots of religious extremism. A logical first step in this process would be yo hold clergy liable if a member of their congregation commits a violent crime. If you claim you’re a shepherd, make money from your vocation, and one of your sheep goes stray, you go to jail too.
As a radical right nutcase friend of mine says dozens of times a day, “I’m sure we can all agree on this!”
We already are friends, and yes the US and Israel have the same problems that would be wonderful to fix together:
1. Let's start with our secret police forces. Let's get rid of all of them. If a country is so embarrassed by what it’s doing that it’s most significant initiatives and investments are covert, it should be thrown out of the UN.
2. Bibi and Donald are both convicted criminals and horrible people. Let's get them both in jail.
3. Let's stop arms sales from both countries immediately. It's enough we both attack our own citizens. Let's observe UN and World Court sanctions and stop monetizing the export of terror. In the case of the US, maybe we could set goals. How about no more than 10% of our economy can be weapons and material sales to global militias in the next 12 months? Obviously this will wreck our economy, but think of all the innocent deaths we won't be responsible for. And the fewer number of families around the globe that will demand retribution against us for generations to come. (Most religions believe it takes seven generations for family hatred to resolve. That means the unarmed person you murder today will provide 140 years of children who believe they're owed the death of one of your relatives. This may be the only tenet of organized religion that makes sense to me.)
4. Let's force religions in both countries to pay their own ways. We could begin by taxing all real estate owned by religious groups. In a few years we could end non-profit treatment of those same groups. Some might fail—I understand the Catholic church in the US is largely bankrupt. People would find better, well-run and legal alternatives if they really needed gods to have a spiritual life.
I know most non-believers would cooperate fixing our joint religion problem, since that's what we've all been begging for for centuries. We have a very long list of further improvements and ideas for working together, once we've fixed these first four simple ones.
We already are friends, and yes the US and Israel have the same problems that would be wonderful to fix together:
1. Let's start with our secret police forces. Let's get rid of all of them. If a country is so embarrassed by what it’s doing that it’s most significant initiatives and investments are covert, it should be thrown out of the UN.
2. Bibi and Donald are both convicted criminals and horrible people. Let's get them both in jail.
3. Let's stop arms sales from both countries immediately. It's enough we both attack our own citizens. Let's observe UN and World Court sanctions and stop monetizing the export of terror. In the case of the US, maybe we could set goals. How about no more than 10% of our economy can be weapons and material sales to global militias in the next 12 months? Obviously this will wreck our economy, but think of all the innocent deaths we won't be responsible for. And the fewer number of families around the globe that will demand retribution against us for generations to come. (Most religions believe it takes seven generations for family hatred to resolve. That means the unarmed person you murder today will provide 140 years of children who believe they're owed the death of one of your relatives. This may be the only tenet of organized religion that makes sense to me.)
4. Let's force religions in both countries to pay their own ways. We could begin by taxing all real estate owned by religious groups. In a few years we could end non-profit treatment of those same groups. Some might fail—I understand the Catholic church in the US is largely bankrupt. People would find better, well-run and legal alternatives if they really needed gods to have a spiritual life.
I know most non-believers would cooperate fixing our joint religion problem, since that's what we've all been begging for for centuries. We have a very long list of further improvements and ideas for working together, once we've fixed these first four simple ones.
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