What a surprise!

More fool me! Here I was thinking nothing that America’s Trump administration could do or say, no matter how politically and morally bankrupt, no matter how venal or violent, was capable of shocking me any longer. Then I woke to today’s news that one of the Trump cabinet’s bigger boofheads – the uber Christian nationalist, crusader-fantasist and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth had announced that America would have a public firing squad execution of murderer Nidal Hasan. Reckless global militarisation including a threat at the UN to annihilate Iran, a litany of sexual misconduct allegations against the commander in chief, claims of blatant presidential corruption … they have all ceased to surprise and shock us, so inured has the world become to Donald Trump’s monstrous narcissism and maladministration. But now we have execution TV. Tune in to the livestream on Thursday 3 December to watch a military firing squad shoot the life out of Hasan, the former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at a US army base in 2009.State-sanctioned killing as entertainment! Yes, the world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at an horrific new moral nadir. The fact that America remains Australia and the west’s most relied-upon and trusted ally despite the global wrecking ball the second Trump administration has proved to be, was already cause for deep concern. But being so closely allied to a country that now wants to turn the execution of a human being – no matter what their crimes – into a live entertainment event, promises to redefine depravity. Given that American states continue to execute so many convicted criminals, where might the United States ultimately draw the line? No doubt the ilk of Hegseth in American society – and elsewhere – will count down the days until they can tune in to the live coverage of Hasan’s execution in droves. Might the audience cry out for more – for livestream cameras in the death chambers across the land of the free? How would this populist administration respond? If you think it is a fanciful question, consider how far American governance and presidential values have slid in the moral murk in the past two years alone. Meanwhile, it is hard to contemplate a more audacious appeal to American society’s darker angels than this looming entertainment event. But there we are. We have arrived. Pass the popcorn, Don, and Pete! It would be heartening today to hear political leaders the world over condemn Hegseth and Trump’s planned introduction of Ghoul TV. But let us please start in Australia, where federal governments have for a long-time opposed capital punishment – let alone turning it into a public spectacle. Will the prime minister and his senior ministers stand up and condemn without qualification this depraved plan for America to livestream an execution? What about the leaders of other political parties here, some of whom have, after all, supported capital punishment? We are waiting. Meanwhile, how much further into the moral quagmire must America wallow before Australia rethinks its craven military dependence on Washington – not least via the reckless shackling of our strategic reliance to the US via the $368bn (and counting) Aukus submarine deal? Announcing America’s decision to turn killing into a form of entertainment, Hegseth said: “It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” America’s defence department later confirmed the execution would be livestreamed. This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilisation towards savagery. You cannot choose your family. But you can choose your friends and allies. And you can also tell them firmly when they have careened off the ethical rails. Actions speak louder than words. And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency. • Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

Satan? I do not believe in Satan, leprechauns, pixies, ghosts, werewolves, jujus, angels, Tooth Faeries, Odin, Thor, Zeus, Ra, Brahma, Athena, Hera, Poseidon, Yahweh, Allah, or the Trinity, demons, devils, Astrology, the Tarot, Satan. For the same reason in every case: there is not the tiniest shred of 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐨𝐟 empirical, 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 any 𝐆𝐨𝐝 and the burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe. Even given no evidence for specific gods, we could make a case for some unspecified “intelligent designer” or “prime mover” or begetter of “something rather than nothing”? By far the most appealing version of this argument is the biological one - living things do present a powerful illusion of design. But that is the very version that Darwin destroyed. Any theist who appeals to “design” of living creatures simply betrays his ignorance of biology. Go away and read a book. And any theist who appeals to biblical “evidence” betrays ignorance of biblical scholarship. The burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe. Even given no evidence for specific gods, could 'his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book. As for the cosmological argument, whose God goes under names such as Prime Mover or First cause, again no evidence. Because physicists are closing in, with spell-binding results. Even if there remain unanswered questions - where do the fundamental laws and constants of physics come from? Obviously, it cannot help to postulate a designer whose existence poses bigger questions than he purports to solve. If science fails, our best hope is to build a better science. The answer will lie neither in theology nor - its exact equivalent - reading tea leaves. In any case, it is a fatuously illogical jump from deistic Unmoved Mover to Christian Trinity, with the Son being tortured and murdered because the Father, for all his omniscience and omnipotence, could not think of a better way to forgive “sin”. Equally unconvincing are those who believe because it comforts them (why should truth be consoling?) or because it “feels right”. The wife of a former UK prime minister may stand for the” feels right” brigade. She based her belief on “an understanding of something that her head cannot explain but my heart knows to be true.” She aspired to become a judge! My’lud, I cannot provide the evidence you require. My head cannot explain why, but my heart knows it to be true. Why is religion immune to the critical standards we apply not just in our courts of law, but in every other life?”
Richard Dawkins

“I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is. I do not wonder anymore. He won for that exact reason. He was not a candidate. He was a mirror. If you were a racist, you found your guy. If you were a misogynist, you found your guy. If money was your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart was armoured shut, you found your guy. If you mocked disabled people, you found your guy. If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy. If you were a rapist, you found your guy. If you enjoyed golden showers with Russian sex workers, you found your guy. If you had done absolutely nothing to confront your emotional wreckage, you found your guy. If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy. If you were a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy. If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy. If you were a conman, you found your guy. If you mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy. If you longed for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy. If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy. If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy. If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy. If you had never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy. If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy. If your ego contained a hole so large not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy. If you were a sociopath who cared not one molecule about other humans, you found your guy. If he had only two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one. This has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated. Trump did not create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate. He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity. If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That is the part that should chill the spine. Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power? We were living in a fool’s paradise. We aren’t anymore." — Michael Jochum

Republicans come in three types. Those motivated by crazy neoliberal ideology based on the sociopathic views of Ayn Rand (“The virtue of selfishness”) Hayek and Friedman. Both social Darwinists who thought that the markets should decide everything. Xenophobic, usually homophobic, and some overtly racist. Some just want to enrich themselves at the expense of others, seek attention, and thirdly,a hate fuelled repugnant mixture of both. Inept, ignorant, incompetent, stupid, perverted, or deranged.

More fool me! Here I was thinking nothing that America’s Trump administration could do or say, no matter how politically and morally bankrupt, no matter how venal or violent, was capable of shocking me any longer. Then I woke to today’s news that one of the Trump cabinet’s bigger boofheads – the uber Christian nationalist, crusader-fantasist and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth had announced that America would have a public firing squad execution of murderer Nidal Hasan. Reckless global militarisation including a threat at the UN to annihilate Iran, a litany of sexual misconduct allegations against the commander in chief, claims of blatant presidential corruption … they have all ceased to surprise and shock us, so inured has the world become to Donald Trump’s monstrous narcissism and maladministration. But now we have execution TV. Tune in to the livestream on Thursday 3 December to watch a military firing squad shoot the life out of Hasan, the former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at a US army base in 2009.State-sanctioned killing as entertainment! Yes, the world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at an horrific new moral nadir. The fact that America remains Australia and the west’s most relied-upon and trusted ally despite the global wrecking ball the second Trump administration has proved to be, was already cause for deep concern. But being so closely allied to a country that now wants to turn the execution of a human being – no matter what their crimes – into a live entertainment event, promises to redefine depravity. Given that American states continue to execute so many convicted criminals, where might the United States ultimately draw the line? No doubt the ilk of Hegseth in American society – and elsewhere – will count down the days until they can tune in to the live coverage of Hasan’s execution in droves. Might the audience cry out for more – for livestream cameras in the death chambers across the land of the free? How would this populist administration respond? If you think it is a fanciful question, consider how far American governance and presidential values have slid in the moral murk in the past two years alone. Meanwhile, it is hard to contemplate a more audacious appeal to American society’s darker angels than this looming entertainment event. But there we are. We have arrived. Pass the popcorn, Don, and Pete! It would be heartening today to hear political leaders the world over condemn Hegseth and Trump’s planned introduction of Ghoul TV. But let us please start in Australia, where federal governments have for a long-time opposed capital punishment – let alone turning it into a public spectacle. Will the prime minister and his senior ministers stand up and condemn without qualification this depraved plan for America to livestream an execution? What about the leaders of other political parties here, some of whom have, after all, supported capital punishment? We are waiting. Meanwhile, how much further into the moral quagmire must America wallow before Australia rethinks its craven military dependence on Washington – not least via the reckless shackling of our strategic reliance to the US via the $368bn (and counting) Aukus submarine deal? Announcing America’s decision to turn killing into a form of entertainment, Hegseth said: “It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” America’s defence department later confirmed the execution would be livestreamed. This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilisation towards savagery. You cannot choose your family. But you can choose your friends and allies. And you can also tell them firmly when they have careened off the ethical rails. Actions speak louder than words. And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency. • Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

And it is a hideous, grotesque, unsightly, monstrous, and unlovely pile of crap. The fool has no taste.

Christians are appaling. I am a reasonable man and am certain that their holy book is an absolute heap of disgusting, slavery condoning, male infant genital mutilation demanding, repellent, demented, vicious dark age mumbo jumbo. Christians should be told quite clearly that our citizens have the legal right to criticise, lampoon, ridicule and mock god and Jesus to their heart’s content, in any way that they wish: that Christians have no special claim to protection from the rough and tumble of post-Enlightenment intellectual, political and social life. If they cannot live in a society in which this is the case, they should go somewhere else; they are, after all, spoilt for choice, at least in theory.

‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn’t spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’

Plague is caused by a bacterium not a virus!

“Consider if you go the New Testament for instruction on how to live, you are told to give away all your possessions, make no plans for the future, reject your family if they disagree with you, and stay celibate if you can (see respectively Matthew 19.21, Matthew 6.25, Matthew 12.48, and 1 Corinthians 7). This is the outlook of people who sincerely believed that the Messiah was going to return next week or next month, anyway very soon. It is an unlivable ethic, and when after several centuries the Second Coming had still not materialised and hope of it had been deferred sine die, more was needed in the way of ethics. Where did it come from? From Greek philosophy – not least from the Stoics – and from the Roman Republican virtues of probity, honour, duty, restraint, respect, friendship and generosity that Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, Horace, and countless others wrote about and enjoined ceaselessly. ‘Christian values’ are largely Greek and Roman secular values. So Christianity is not even Christianity. It is more correct to say that ‘we are Greeks and Romans’ and meant that we are defined by the following words – and therefore concepts – of classical Greek and Latin origin: democracy, liberalism, values, history, morality, comedy, tragedy, literature, music, academy, alphabet, memory, politics, ethics, populace, geography, energy, exploration, hegemony, theory, mathematics, science, theatre, medicine, gymnasium, climate, clone, bureaucracy, dialect, analogy, psychology, method, nostalgia, organ, encyclopaedia, education, paradox, empiricism, polemic, rhetoric, dinosaur, telescope, system, school, trophy, type, fantasy, photography…take almost any word denoting political and social institutions, ideas, learning, science and technology, medicine, and culture, and it derives from the language – and therefore the ideas and the history of ancient Greece and Rome."

I am a reasonable man and am certain that the holy book, the bible is an absolute heap of disgusting, slavery condoning, male infant genital mutilation demanding, repellent, demented, vicious dark age mumbo jumbo. Christians should be told quite clearly that our citizens have the legal right to criticise, lampoon, ridicule and mock god and Jesus to their heart’s content, in any way that they wish: that Christians have no special claim to protection from the rough and tumble of post-Enlightenment intellectual, political and social life. If they cannot live in a society in which this is the case, they should go somewhere else; they are, after all, spoilt for choice, at least in theory.

Imagine that you were omnipotent, omniscient, and master of the entire universe. You decided that you were going to give one – just one – book to humanity. It would be their moral compass, an insight into their nature and into yours, and act as a guide for how they could live rightly and walk a path that would lead their souls into an eternity with you. Obviously, the first thing you would want to put in there are some totally unscientific, archaic behavioural codes for menstruating women, and for pregnant women after they give birth. You would want to be sure to help them regulate slavery and specify how badly they were allowed to beat their slaves. And of course, you would want the book to be chock full of mythology – a creation myth, a flood myth, a fictional exodus, and hagiographical stories about how your loyal armies killed the shit out of everyone who dared to worship the wrong gods. There is a point here about the Bible that, in any estimation, really cannot be understated: there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that could not have been simply made up by Bronze-Age human beings. Nothing at all. There are no profound scientific insights that such cultures could never have known. There is some bogus cosmology, a flat Earth, and instructions for how to slaughter animals among other profound insights. Now, some Christians are keen to point out that the Jews did apparently get some things right. They had “Imagine that you were the perfect, omnipotent, all-knowing Lord and Creator of a sanitation system… but so did ancient Egypt, the Hittites, the Elamites, and the Aegean civilization. So, big whoop. They also had some codes for cleansing themselves after handling dead bodies or people with leprosy, but these rituals also included ritual animal sacrifice. Not exactly innovative. Moreover, the rituals themselves were stupid – after handling a corpse, for example, you would be “unclean for seven days” [Numbers 19:11]. This obviously had little to do with hygiene. Then we have the New Testament. Written by anonymous authors decades after the events purportedly happened and filled with internal factual contradictions, with no trace of the original manuscripts and thousands of copies rife with errors, there is nothing about the New Testament that demands that a rational person should believe it to be divinely inspired. I challenge Christians to show that the evidence demanded that we believe the supernatural claims of the Bible are anything more than made-up. There is simply no reason whatsoever for any rational person to make such an assumption. Is the Bible really the best God could do? Is this book of myths, scientific blunders, and ambiguous or even downright demonstrably bogus historicity really what anyone really thinks the omnipotent Lord of the universe would bestow upon humanity? That this God would ignore humanity for the bulk of its 200,000+ years on the Earth, only deciding to reveal his One True Religion to a small, mostly illiterate Bronze Age tribal culture? Think of all the things the Bible could be if it were really divinely inspired. Think of all the knowledge and insight such a holy book could contain that simply could never have been made up – profound scientific insights, timeless moral instruction, and revelation clear enough to prevent the innumerable schisms in Christian theology over fundamental issues, like how to attain salvation. Any sane, rational view of the Bible shows it to be little more than the confused scribblings of ignorant Bronze or early Iron Age tribes.

Old but still true. “But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that! You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you…. they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you. They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. IT’S CALLED THE AMERICAN DREAM, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO BE ASLEEP TO BELIEVE IT.”

George Carlin

Agree. ‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn’t spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’