Here’s another installment of Shooting the Bull, as part of my attempt to placate those who say “You write great stuff, but you write too long!” The idiom “shooting the bull” means expressing one’s opinions, whether or not one has any worthwhile knowledge. I am a bullshoot artist.

Here are four brief pieces, with some links for further educational and often amusing reading on RationalWiki.

BULLSHOOT #1:
War on Solstice

“Season’s Greetings” dates to the late 19th century, and “Happy Holidays” is over a century old. They’re ideal phrases for the winter holiday season because they include everyone. Whether you’re a Christian celebrating Christmas, a Jew observing Hanukkah, an African-American enjoying Kwanzaa, or someone enjoying the Winter Solstice, either phrase says it all. For a long time, everyone accepted them as perfectly fine. Then came a bunch of intolerant and hateful Christians. Who else, right? Angry conservative commentators declared that this is part of the alleged “War on Christmas” designed to destroy their Christian faith (part of the larger and equally fictitious War on Christianity). I have a few points about this.

First, how weak is someone’s faith, religion, and god if someone saying “Season’s Greetings” can topple all three? As Jeff Schweitzer said on The Huffington Post in 2014, “An 80 percent majority can claim victimhood only with an extraordinary flight from reality.” Sounds about right for that bunch.

Second, people have held secular and religious celebrations around the winter solstice for thousands of years, perhaps in Neolithic times—as much as 10,000 years before Christianity began. Christians don’t OWN December. Heck, good luck finding a top-10 list of Christmas songs that has ANY religious tunes in it. The general public prefers songs about white snow, jingling bells, decking the halls, and holly-jolly times. (DOH! Maybe it’s the first step in destroying Christmas!)

Third, these hateful, intolerant Christians can’t handle anyone believing differently than they do. If there’s a war going on, it’s a war that they wage on everyone else. How dare other people celebrate ANYTHING! Look, you don’t see door-to-door Jews complaining about a War on Judaism, or atheists preaching on street corners about a War on the Winter Solstice. Why can’t the hateful, intolerant Christians mind their own business and worry about themselves instead of everyone else?

Fourth, this has nothing to do with a war on anything; it’s a manufactroversy created by religious zealots to rile up its legions of gullible followers who are equally incensed that others don’t believe as they do and are easily frightened by fictions that tell them the secularists are coming to burn their Christmas trees and tear down their decorations.

And fifth… Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays as we survive another trip around the Sun. The hateful, intolerant idiots can quote me on that.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/War_on_Christmas
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Manufactroversy

BULLSHOOT #2:
A Few Terms to Know

Speaking of idiots, here are three things that apply nicely to politics and modern culture.

The first is the Peter Principle, postulated by Laurence J. Peter in his research of hierarchies. It basically states that people rise to, or are promoted beyond, their level of competence—or, more precisely, to their level of incompetence. We’ve all worked with people who were good at their jobs but were promoted to management positions when they have no skills at managing people or processes. They’re often promoted by superiors who are also beyond their levels of competence. It’s a self-sustaining framework to ensure that success is limited.

The second is the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which basically says that dumb people tend to overestimate their intelligence and smart people tend to underestimate theirs. This applies well to the current social landscape. Think of the armies of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, moon-hoaxers, flat-Earthers, and people who believe Trump won the 2020 election. They refuse to believe in facts and evidence, and despite their incapability they’re convinced that they’re smarter than everyone else.

The third is the so-called backfire effect. This refers to what happens when people (often the same who grossly overestimate their intelligence) are confronted with evidence that proves them wrong; instead of accepting it, they reject the evidence and believe even more strongly in their incorrect positions. There have been no studies on this, but the current social climate seems to support it.

Conservative politicians feed into all three. They’re elected by popular vote, which has nothing to do with their capability to lead or represent; the mob has promoted them beyond their level of competence, so there’s the Peter Principle. And to listen to them talk, they’re clearly examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect; they think they’re right when they’re demonstrably wrong. When they’re shown irrefutable evidence, the backfire effect has them refuting it anyway and doubling down on their beliefs.

I’m not saying another form of government is better than a democratic republic, but this is what’s going on, folks. Until the masses become smart enough to stop putting people like that into office, this is the world we’re stuck in.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eponymous_laws#The_Peter_Principle
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect

BULLSHOOT #3:
Screw Women, Apparently

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that has long ensured a woman’s right to have an abortion. I say “about to” because it’s clear that that’s what’s happening; either it will be officially overturned or abortion will continue to be limited to such a degree that it will be effectively overturned by way of allowing the states dictatorial rule over women’s bodies. It’s clear that the six-justice conservative majority already made up their minds on the case before hearing arguments, and now they’re merely looking for HOW to word their opinion, which will further enslave women to American conservatives, so that they can pretend to be fair and impartial.

This is one of the consequences of Hillary Clinton losing in 2016; remember, Donald Trump placed three justices on the Supreme Court. The Christian right has crusaded since the Roe v. Wade decision to stop women from making choices about their bodies, and they’re finally about to win. Their beliefs are shrouded in “It’s a helpless, innocent life!” but it’s really about control. That’s what they do. If it were about helpless, innocent lives, they wouldn’t fight against welfare programs and no children in this country would ever be homeless.

Abortion isn’t murder. It’s removing something from a woman’s body that she doesn’t want there. It isn’t anyone else’s business why she wants it removed. But that will never be enough for politicians pandering to their far-right base.

There are two rays of light in this darkness. First, many Republicans are nervous. This was a cause célèbre for them for decades that I doubt most ever expected to win. If they do, I suspect a social reckoning is coming soon, even in red states. Second, the very liberal state of California recently announced it would be a sanctuary state for those seeking abortion; there is even talk of providing transportation for women to get there to have it done. If this seems like a financial pipe dream, remember that the state of California has the sixth-largest economy in the world. IN THE WORLD. It’s behind only the U.S., China, Japan, Germany, and the UK. That’s extraordinary. Stay tuned on that.

Meanwhile, get ready for fresh challenges to undo gay marriage… and who knows what else the intolerant and hateful right thinks it can get the current SCOTUS to undo. It looks like they might be able to get it to undo anything.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Abortion

BULLSHOOT #4:
Objectify This!

Speaking of women making choices…

We all objectify people for different things. For example, I like the music of rock singer Meat Loaf. For many other reasons, he does NOT sound like someone I’d probably hang out with. All I know is his music, so liking him for only that means I’m objectifying him as a musician. I objectify Seth MacFarlane for how he makes me laugh and Ruth Bader-Ginsburg for her powerful presence on the bench. I objectify Scarlett Johansson for being the ass-kicking Black Widow and William Shatner for being the heroic Captain Kirk. I objectify Stephen King for his stories and books, Barack Obama for being a great president, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being unafraid to take a stand. I objectify these people for the very limited things I know about them.

But Scarlett… I objectify her sexually, too. I’m a heterosexual male and my brain is wired to notice her. That’s just evolution at work. Nobody ever saw a woman across a crowded room and said, “Wow… look at the brain on her! I’d like to get into her intellect! I bet her morals and values are awesome!” It works both ways, too; no woman ever saw a man across a crowded room and said, “I bet his ability at communicating is nine inches long!” Physical attraction often comes first; important things like morals and values usually come later. Fortunately, many men are able to control themselves and not act like lust-starved animals by wolf-whistling and shouting lewd comments to women in public. That’s civilized behavior at work.

Regardless of how polite some of us are, you might think men are pigs merely for checking out women in bikinis at all. But women self-objectify, too. They do so when they make themselves up and deck themselves out for a night on the town, participate in beauty pageants, pose in men’s magazines, or appear in erotic films. And that’s fine! If a woman wants to do any of those things, that’s her choice. We’re sexual creatures, most of us wired to check out those who appeal to us. While hetero men in general need to do a better job of subtly looking instead of blatantly gawking, sexual objectification is normal—even if the idea offends you. Objectification in general is just a side effect of being human.

When it comes to the sexual variety, let’s focus less on who is objectifying or self-objectifying and more on the important things, like strengthening our legal system to identify sexual predators early and properly punish them for sex crimes—and learning to pay attention when a woman tells her story about being a victim. There’s a huge gulf between looking at a woman and assaulting her.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rape

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.