WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN Quotes

“For most Americans, the election of the first African-American president was a milestone in correcting a 350-year-old crime. It was a cleansing moment, and a sign of hope for the future. But for others it was a moment of fear, and Republicans played on that for 7 years, insidiously fomenting anger, mistrust, and outright hatred. Now, they bemoan the loss of their party. Well, tough shit. You cynically picked the scab of racism until the wound opened and the pus called Trump oozed out. You birthed this monstrous idiot. You deal with him. These”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“We assume Orwell’s 1984 dystopian nightmare can’t happen here, yet we’ve been narcotized into a more ominous Orwellian somnambulism. We’re inebriated on our own mythology, priapic at our military supremacy, and malleable via our ionic imagery, whether it’s Jesus or the flag. Jacked up on Adderall, Red Bull and patriotism, we only unite in war, tragedy and the Super Bowl. We’ve become style over substance, image over reality, propaganda over truth, and symbol over meaning. We claim to value education, yet mistrust intelligence. Immune to facts, frightened of change, we think magically; magic potions that will heal us, magic diets that will shrink us, and magic beliefs that will save us. And we think all this behavior has been blessed by a big daddy in the sky who lovingly placed us here for profit, guns, and heterosexual marriage. Perhaps evolution is a myth, in that we seem to be devolving. The”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“The Republican rallying cry of the last seven years has been that they want to take the country back. Yes, back to a time when men worked and women stayed home and watched the kids. A time when there were no drugs but everyone drank. There were no abortions except in back alleys. No gays, except in the closet. Minorities knew their place. And strikers got their heads busted. And if we didn’t like another country, we bombed the shit out of it; their whitewashed, utopian dream, and every else’s dystopian nightmare.”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“I know there’s Godwin’s Law, and the notion that the moment Hitler is invoked in an argument, the argument is lost. So I won’t compare Trump to Hitler. He’s more Hitler-Lite. Although if it came down to a decision between Trump and Cruz over whose hand I would prefer on the nuclear button, I’d have to go with Trump. The man’s rich. He obviously relishes the pleasures of this life. Cruz is a religious fanatic who thinks there’s a better time awaiting in the sky. He’s in a hurry to get to the next world, so why not blow this one up. For”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Donald Trump is Dumbfuckistan incarnate. Just as Sarah Palin was its head cheerleader, Trump is its star quarterback. It was hardly surprising that she showed up in Iowa to endorse him, delivering a speech that made her sound like a drunken stroke victim. They made quite a pair, standing on stage: the unstoppable farce meets the unshameable object. Trump”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“The main thing wrong with religion is that people have gotten it wrong. The goal is to understand religion as it should be understood, as traditions, myths, symbols, and practices intended to lead one to a deeper, more profound experience of human life. The desire for this knowledge is hard wired in us. That won’t disappear. Unless of course we wipe each other out in the next holy war, in which case we’ve successfully screwed ourselves.”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“The right question is: where is the meaning in life? Meaning is a man-made concept. It’s something we infer from those experiences that are self-evidently good, and stem from a feeling of joy and wonder. Meaning is not something that occurs in the future. It exists in the here and now, within the fact that our lives are finite. F”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“The moment you fall to your knees in front of a cross, thinking you’re praying to some God, you’re missing the point. The idea is to look through the symbol to the meaning behind it. Or, as Zen Buddhists put it: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” T”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Sexual taboos are man’s invention. Sexual repression and misogyny are the result of a paternalistic society with a fundamental disconnect from its own basic nature. From angry, gynophobic mullahs hell-bent on covering women up to their eyeballs, to the denizens of Vatican City, who look and dress like a bunch of drag queens, some truly perverted individuals have been allowed to make the sex rules for everyone else. Marriage”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“From the moralizing of the Christian right to the cruelty and misogyny of Sharia Law, the result is a perverted understanding of our basic, biological nature, particularly when it comes to our urge to procreate. You could call it Religion’s Unholy Trinity: Sex, Homosexuality, and Abortion. Sex”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“But, at the end of the day, the problem isn’t money, lies, propaganda, negative ads, dirty tricks, decentralized news, talking points, or trumped up investigations. The problem is that they work on us. And they work because we’re uncritical, uneducated, and uninformed. A smarter electorate would be more skeptical of the lies. In fact, the incendiary tone and hyperbolic rhetoric in the message would instantly lead one to question the content. And”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Crap food. Toxic music. Even pop psychology and religion. We take the human impulse toward self-knowledge, and reconstitute it as EST, The Forum, and Scientology. We pervert the 5000-year-old spiritual discipline of Yoga into a weight loss regimen and an excuse to buy cute, clingy stretch pants. And then there’s our affectation for New Age religion, which is to actual religion as light jazz is to Coltrane: Astrology, palm reading, Phrenology, past life regression, astral projection, tarot, numerology, crystals, psychics, and mediums who talk to the dead.”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“(Ayn Rand was the godmother of laissez faire capitalism, the Virgin Mary of Libertarianism. She died in 1982. She spent her life attempting to turn selfishness into a religion so that people could claim their greed was grounded in the nature of man. Her heinous ideas and crappy books have given politicians philosophical cover to promote their “greed is good” agenda for decades.”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Vaccinating your kids isn’t about parental choice. It’s about verifiable science, public health, and social responsibility, particularly considering the fact that every school classroom I’ve ever visited was a greasy, grimy Petri Dish of germs and airborne snot. Letting your unvaxxed spawn run amok in that hamster cage is not an expression of your freedom. It’s an expression of you being a selfish dick. Or dickette. And will result in creating a new generation of Typhoid Megans and Dylans. The”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“•A candidate running for president in 2012 referred to higher education as “mind control” and “indoctrination.” He ran again in 2016.         •A former Governor and 2012 presidential contender blamed the separation of church and state on Satan. He also sought to solve his state’s drought problem by asking its citizens to pray for rain. He ran again in 2016.         •A 2012 presidential contender claimed, “there’s violence in Israel because Jesus is coming soon.”         •A Georgia congressman claimed that evolution and the Big Bang Theory were “lies straight from the pit of Hell,” adding “Earth is about 9,000 years old and was created in six days, per the Bible.” He’s a physician, and a high-ranking member of the House Science Committee.         •From another member of the House Science Committee: “Prehistoric climate change could have been caused by dinosaur flatulence.”         •From the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: “Global warming isn’t real, God is in control of the world.”         •A former Speaker of the House -- a born-again Christian, and convicted felon – declared, “One thing Americans seem to forget is that God wrote the Constitution.”         •The Lt. Governor of a southern state claimed that Yoga may result in satanic possession.         •A Southern senator claimed, “video games represent a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people.”         •A California state representative proudly stated: “Guns are used to defend our property and our families and our freedom, and they are absolutely essential to living the way God intended for us to live.”         •Another California representative suggested that abortion was to blame for the state’s drought.         •From a Texas representative: “The great flood is an example of climate change. And that certainly wasn’t because mankind overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”         •An Oklahoma representative said: “Just because the Supreme Court rules on something doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s constitutional.”         •From another Texas representative: “We know Al Qaeda has camps on the Mexican border. We have people that are trained to act Hispanic when they are radical Islamists.”         •A South Carolina State representative, commenting on the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage said, “The devil is taking control of this land and we’re not stopping him!”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Unfortunately, Ms. Palin is hardly the only passenger on the intellectual short bus. Going right from her Election Day loss, she immediately became the hard-core right’s drum majorette, leading a parade of folksy, old-timey stupidity into the American conversation. And that stupidity has taken root, not merely as another side in the debate, but in many respects, setting the narrative. It not only laid the groundwork for the Tea Party, but has infected all branches of government, from the lowliest Texas school board idiot who thinks the Earth is 6000 years old, right up to a late Supreme Court Justice. In”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Another way to look at these battles is in Freudian terms. Our politics is essentially a war with ourselves, the natural extension of our conflicting psychological impulses. The id gives us Republicans, who value individual rights and resist any impediment to a person pursuing their self-interest. (Unless of course it involves sex. In which case the government must step in and the guilty must be slut-shamed.) Our superego gives us Democrats, who value the role of government and our responsibility to one another. And, like an individual with a healthy ego, we need both aspects of who we are to live life to the fullest. That’s why we have a Defense Department, and Medicare. Before”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Freedom of speech carries the responsibility of thought. And we don’t think. For all our gushing about living in a country dedicated to the proposition that everyone is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we don’t respect life, we don’t understand liberty, and we have a perverted sense of happiness.”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Martin Luther King said that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. The same could be said for the arc of American history. It also bends toward reason, and sanity. But it’s a slow, slow bend. And with every movement forward, dumb America has shrieked and howled like a wounded animal. Since”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“At this point, some have argued that if spirituality is essentially a psychological phenomenon, ultimately there’s no need for traditional religions, with all their concomitant mythological and homicidal baggage. That may be true, but I don’t see how this argument will suddenly, and magically make these traditions disappear. We are where we are, so we might as well deal with the situation as it is. F”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Religion is an outgrowth of the human desire for self-knowledge, and an experience not just of our common humanity but of our unity with all life. It’s the search for enhanced consciousness, higher education in human life. Religion isn’t something one believes. It’s something one does. This”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Religion has served as a propaganda device for inciting the passions of people with a political grievance and manipulating them into thinking that it’s possible, even noble, to kill for God. Although religion is a powerful motivator, ultimately, the human behavior at work is blind belief in any ideology. Stalinist purges, Mao’s cultural revolution, the Cambodian killing fields. None of them required religion. What fueled them was blind obedience to some mythical higher calling. It doesn’t matter whether it’s God, or Dialectical Materialism, Marx’s opiate of the masses is also the amphetamine of the extremists. T”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Take 100 terminally ill patients. Then take 100 prayer circles around them, days and weeks of praying non-stop. Then 99 of those patients die anyway. But one survives. Do we ever hear the stories of all the failed prayer attempts? No. The only story that appears in the media is the one about the miracle survivor, the healing power of prayer, and the angels who were looking over them. But what about all the patients who just died? Were the angels too busy, or just apathetic? It”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“And, as an interesting sidebar, when you realize there’s no God, or devil, not only does belief become silly, but movies like The Exorcist and The Omen instantly turn into comedies. Well made, yet fundamentally comical. You don’t even need to get high to watch them that way. Linda Blair levitating over the bed, face scratched up, head spinning around and howling like a demon while Max von Sydow flings holy water at her, bellowing, “THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!!” Hilarious. E”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“The world came into existence and evolved over billions of years. If conditions hadn’t been right for life to occur, we simply wouldn’t exist. Our world is a reflection of who we are and how we evolved. The mistake is finding ourselves alive on Earth and assuming we were meant to be here, instead of merely appreciating the fact that we are. We can appreciate our reality without assuming our necessity. T”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Arrogance. We think we’ve been lovingly placed on this tiny spec of space dust by a benevolent father figure whose got a super special plan for each one of our lives, and afterlives. We also think He loves one particular group more than any other. Of course, which group that is depends on whether you’re talking to Jews, Christians, or Muslims. Even”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Reason vs. belief. Any word, system, or theory should be evaluated solely on the basis of whether it accurately describes the world. The goal is to explain what is the case, not what people wish were the case, think is the case, or believe with all their heart is the case. Belief in the existence of a proposition does not establish its validity. F”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Believers cling to their beliefs, and you challenge them at your own risk. To atheists, religion is just a nonsensical collection of ghost stories and fairy tales for people who don’t have the wherewithal to deal with life based on reason and reality. As for agnostics, they’re just intellectual eunuchs who think they’re demonstrating great equanimity by throwing their hands in the air, proclaiming, “maybe there’s a God, maybe there’s isn’t. It’s all too mysterious for we humans to know.”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Even on the rare occasion when a civilized discussion of religion occurs, it’s usually rooted in a single question: do you believe in God? If the answer is “no,” the typically petulant comeback is: “Then what do you believe?” Americans get offended when anyone questions their beliefs without stopping to wonder why it’s necessary for a person to have beliefs, over and above actual knowledge and experience. Our”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“We’ve confused freedom of religion with the notion that any behavior or statement, no matter how idiotic or onerous, carries an inherent legitimacy, as long as it’s grounded in someone’s faith. For all our technical sophistication, when it comes to the subject of religion, we’re so mired in ignorance and superstition we might as well be running around in animal skins, sacrificing goats, and throwing virgins into volcanoes. Chronologically this may be the 21st century, but intellectually it’s the Dark Ages. A”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America