I’ll try and make this easy.  If you boarded an airplane and the pilot announced (before the doors had closed) that not only was this his very first flight as a professional pilot — and (cause that’s not enough), he doesn’t believe in science, he believes in Magic — and just to prove that HIS MAGIC is as good as OUR SCIENCE — he’s going to CUT THE ENGINES at 37,000 feet and PRAY US the rest of the way to our destination.

Who’s staying on board that airplane?  Anyone?

Make it a heart surgeon who’s shrugged off looking at your charts before cutting into you — he’s going to wait for Divine Inspiration and THEN cut you.  You staying on the table?

When people tell us they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, we should listen to them like our lives depended on it.

While politicians may not have their hand on a literal wheel — what they do can and does have almost the same impact.  So — WHY they do WHAT they do is important because it indicates whether or not they’re representing OUR interests or whether they’re conflicted somehow.  For my part, I prefer that people making decisions that impact others have the same ‘RESPECT for Reality that I have.

I believe FACTS matter far more than FEELINGS.  I recognize that FACTS can ’cause’ FEELINGS to happen — and those feelings can effect how we perceive those facts — but those FEELINGS do not ever ‘CHANGE’ those FACTS.  FACTS remain FACTS regardless of how ANYONE ‘feels’ about them.

So — when people inclined to poor decision-making BECAUSE THEIR DECISION-MAKING PROCESS INVOLVES ‘MAGICAL THINKING’ go to make a decision, they tend to skip right past all Logic, Analytical Thinking and Thoughtful Analysis to their Magical Thinking Wheelhouse and push ‘Start’.

The Facts On The Ground do not matter.  You have BULLSHIT singing in your ears (badly and completely out of tune).   Bullshit always has its way.

We are living during War Time, folks — but not just ONE WAR… No, we’ve got TWO WARS on our hands.  Good thing they’re ‘related’ — otherwise this could get complicated.

War #1) THE CYBER WAR — the one Vladimir Putin & Russia are waging on us with the full and complete cooperation of Donald J Trump, his Crime Family & the Whole Republican Party.  We’ve ‘talked about that’ here and will again, I’m sure.  War #2) THE CULTURE WAR — The one the Republican Party has chosen to wage on the American People.

The Republican Party does this at the behest of its SECOND Most Vocal, Forceful Constituent — The Hardcore Christian Right Wing.  The MOST Vocal (behind the scenes — and ‘in its own way’), Forceful Constituent is MONEY, of course — and the handful of Rich, White, Christian families who HOARD that money as if it could save them from ‘DEATH’ itself (it won’t).

Right now, decisions and decision-making are coming at us more quickly than most people can handle.  That’s not a coincidence.  Those pushing the rush of decisions want people to fall back on the decision-making skills that they learned while going through the American Educational System– Oh, wait… that’s right — we don’t TEACH ‘decision-making skills’.  We RUN from them — preferring to stick a bible under their noses (a bible no one has cracked or WILL crack) with a handful of ‘Do It Cos Big Daddy In The Sky Sez Do-It’ type ‘lessons’.  And that, or some variation, is what amounts to ‘Doing Something”.

Here’s the problem in cold, hard, practical terms.  Sorry if it offends.  No, actually — not sorry at all…

Your average republican (and they put a shine on the word ‘average’ like no one else) ‘CLAIMS’ TO BELIEVE – AS FACT that:  “A Magical Man In The Sky had UNPROTECTED SEX with a Young Female Human who had never had sex before and produced together a ‘Man-God-Baby’ whose ‘mission on earth’ was to ‘DIE’ for All Humanity’s ‘sins’ because A WOMAN named ‘Eve’ once ate a piece a fruit she shouldn’t have — because a TALKING SNAKE told her to…”.

Pretty strange story, right?  But there are more than a few Christians — IN CONGRESS no less — who will claim — out in the open — ON TV EVEN — that they absolutely, positively believe that these things ALL actually happened EXACTLY AS WRITTEN.  That THEY are HISTORICAL FACTS that are INDISPUTABLE.  These ‘LEADERS’ who control what we do as a Nation — have as their KNOWLEDGE BASE a story which while ‘instructive’ and ‘imaginative’ IS NOT HISTORY and to act like it IS history — while DENYING ANY UNDERLYING MESSAGE THE STORY HAS — is an example of the MOST cynical bullshit.

And it’s BULLSHIT.

You might as well say ‘Yeah, I see the apple falling — but I’m still not buying into this ‘gravity’ thing…’.

You’ve told the class — unequivocally — that you are a sucker, a day trader, a headlines only reader.

And, you’ve told them that facts ultimately do not matter to you.

Given a choice between decision-making based on ‘faith’ (which is… guesswork?  Wishful Thinking?  Hopefulness on Steroids?) and Stone Cold Reality, I’ll take the Stone Cold Reality, please.

Realists keep their eyes open — they HAVE TO.