The Crux of the Matter

“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

– Methodist Pastor David Barnhart

Real Genius

Kent: You’re all just a bunch of degenerates!

Chris Knight: We are? What about that time I found you naked with that bowl of Jello?

Kent: You did not!

Chris Knight: This is true.

Kent: I was hot and I was hungry.

The real genius of this movie was the dialog.  It’s so ridiculous that it almost sounds true.

Even if we’re in The Matrix, does it really matter?

Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.

“Conan the Barbarian” in the novel Queen of the Black Coast by Robert E. Howard