Oddly Inspiring Thoughts for the Day

Yes, irony, I'm blogging about doing. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Some thoughts from Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism, which I'm finding more interesting the less I think "is this more or less brilliant than the other ideas in class" and the more I think "huh, wonder if this makes sense":

That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does...

There's no such thing as a cowardly constitution.... the coward is defined on the basis of the acts he performs. People feel, in a vague sort of way, that this coward we're talking about is guilty of being a coward, and the thought frightens them. What people would like is that a coward or hero be born that way.

If one calls every attitude of unbelief despair, then the word is not being used in its original sense. Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would that would change nothing [because] we think that the problem of His existence is not the issue... In this sense existentialism is optimistic, a doctrine of action, and it is plain dishonesty for Christians to make no distinction between their own despair and ours and then to call us despairing."

All Right, That's Enough

So grinnin' John McCain and his chicken bull running mate are now LEADING in the polls.

I, along with much of America, was initially shocked to discover that all it took to get the GOP base fired up was a good-looking goofball with minimal executive experience, a hostility to books, and an authoritarian streak wider than Larry Craig's stace.

Then I remembered the 2000 election.

We need to take this seriously. These two could be your future presidents.

Really.

I'm pretty lazy, I admit. But I'm not deluded enough to think that blogging makes much if any impact. There are far more practical things to be done. So I'd like to encourage people to post to the comments sections ideas about practical steps one can take to help register new voters, how to make calls to get voters to polls, etc. Information (phone numbers, URLs, etc.) about such practical ideas are also much appreciated.

If nothing else, it'll help me figure out how to spend my time and money between now and election day.

Thanks!