Best of the Infidel, 2021

Political power isn't the only kind of power.

The right-wingers' delusions are their greatest weakness.

During the pandemic, life is lived via cables.

A poetic meditation on history, with autobiographical elements mixed in.

Extraterrestrial life may exist, but it's probably not intelligent.

I don't do debates.

Stages of cultural development determine what social and political battles can be won.

Some ruminations on cancel culture and censorship.

Christianity is a blood cult.

Long ago, I volunteered as a pro-choice escort at a Portland abortion clinic.

Forget about colonizing Mars.

A claim isn't worth much without evidence to back it up.

Your consciousness is not an entity inhabiting your brain, it's a set of processes your brain performs.

No, the US is not going to become "majority-minority", and it's dangerously self-defeating for the left to claim it will.

Sometimes division is better than unity for stimulating progress.

I "declared independence" from the increasingly-insane world of politics.

Learning about the autistic experience can help you understand your authentic self.

The pandemic is changing character; leave the willfully unvaccinated to their fate.

Political media and blogs should cover mass grassroots actions like strikes, not just focus on what politicians are doing.

Never having been religious, I'm free of some common mental traps.

Effective free speech is about more than the First Amendment or government rules.

Religion's rigidity and inability to evolve doom it to cultural and moral obsolescence.

The AUKUS pact, standing up firmly to China, is the most important accomplishment of Biden's presidency so far.

I observed Blasphemy Day International.

As a totalitarian state, China suffers from rampant corruption and incompetence, with ghastly consequences for construction quality.

We need to look at politics "from the bottom up" instead of "from the top down", and remember that culture influences politics far more than vice versa.

I have some issues with pornography.

I anticipated Halloween in images.

The political scene just looks more hopeless.

The economy is rigged against working people.

Every dark age is followed by a rebirth of civilization -- and I think we're through with dark ages.

I express moods in images.

Abortion is an essential freedom, not an expendable political chess piece.

Over time, natural selection will make covid-19 less dangerous.

My best, and probably last, political post is on the politicizing of everyday things.