Courtesy of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Day: November 15, 2019
Friday Fictioneers — The Revolution
It didn’t take long after the revolution that the new Constitution, declaring America be a Christian Nation, was adopted. The practice of any religion other than Christianity was banned. Jews and Muslims were the first to be persecuted, their synagogues and mosques either destroyed or shuttered. Those who were caught practicing their religion were rounded up and either imprisoned or deported.
Then Hindus, Buddhists, and even Mormons and other “non-conforming” Christians were targeted. Atheists were declared enemies of the state and were executed.
The United States became a theocracy. They said this could never happen in America.
It did.
(100 words)
Written for this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt from Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Photo credit: Roger Bultot.
Can You Believe…?
“A teenage gunman opened fire at a Southern California high school Thursday morning, killing two students and wounding three others, before shooting himself in the head, officials said.”
Yet another horrific, senseless, and likely preventable school shooting occurred yesterday. It barely made the national news, as such shootings are becoming all too common. And all of our elected representatives, or at least all of the Republican representatives, anyway, seem able to do is to send their thoughts and prayers.
Last night I was catching up on the comments on my FOWC with Fandango word prompt yesterday, where the word was “can.” One of the commenters, Christine Bialczak at Stine Writing, wrote a post in response to that prompt and it really moved me. She expressed the frustration that I, and so many of us in America, am feeling about all of these mass shootings, particularly at schools.
I want more people to read and to share Christine’s words, but my reblog button on my WordPress iPhone app still doesn’t seem to be working. So I’ve taken a screenshot of her post and am re-posting it here.
Please follow this link over to Christine’s post and share your thoughts with her. I also encourage you to reblog her post (if your reblog button works) so that as many people as possible will start asking these same questions and perhaps ask them of their elected representatives.
Fandango’s Friday Flashback — November 15
Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of you earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember?
Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 15th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on November 15, 2010 in my old, now defunct blog. It is, admittedly, a bit dated, as it refers to Sarah Palin. Remember her? I also removed the links to the Zogby poll and to the ABC News/Washington Post poll, as those links are no longer available.
Good News, Bad News
I’ve got some good news for you and some bad news. According to a recent Zogby poll, 37% of Americans say they believe in ghosts. And according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, 27% of American voters say Sarah Palin is qualified to be president.
So first, the good news is that more Americans believe in ghosts than believe that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president. The bad news is that 37% of Americans believe in ghosts!
But I guess that’s to be expected. After all, most Americans are Christian and most are taught, according to Christian mythology, that Jesus had a god as his father and a human woman — who also happened to be a virgin — as his mother. They’re also taught that an elderly man built a huge ark and loaded it up with one pair of each living creature on Earth that he somehow rounded up, and while God flooded the entire planet, this guy and his menagerie sailed around for forty days and nights until the flood waters receded.
I could go on and on, but beliefs such as these certainly make it plausible that more than a third of Americans actually believe in ghosts.
(Editorial post script: It occurred to me after I re-read the draft of this post that some people might take offense at what appears to be my singling out Christianity for its strange mythologies and somewhat absurd beliefs. The reason I did so is because four out of five Americans identify themselves as Christians, and since this post is referencing to what Americans believe, I used Christianity to illustrate my point. The fact is that, as an atheist, I find the mythologies, beliefs, and superstitions of virtually all recognized religions of the world to be pretty much equally absurd. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe that each person has a right to believe or not believe in anything he or she chooses — including believing in ghosts, holy and otherwise. Hey, whatever floats your ark.)
Before posting this flashback today, I was curious if 37% of Americans in 2019, nine years after the Zogby poll I referenced, still believe in ghosts. Turns out that, according this recent poll, the percent of Americans who today believe in ghosts is up to 45!
FOWC with Fandango — Prudent
Welcome to November 15, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.
I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).
Today’s word is “prudent.”
Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.
Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.
The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.
And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.
This, That, and the Other 