The Binary Circumstance

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both paid visits to Seattle to drum up support for the caucuses on Saturday.

Clinton promoted her vision of mandatory universal health care.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton jabbed at President Bush and issued a detailed call for universal health care Thursday night as she sought to draw distinctions between herself and Sen. Barack Obama, her Democratic rival.

She told an enthusiastic crowd of thousands in Seattle that if they believed like she did and wanted mandated health care for everyone, “I’m the only candidate on either side that you should come out and support on Saturday.”

I guess she sees herself as the one, true candidate just like religious people view their God as the one, true God.

Having watched Julian Schnabel’s remarkable film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last night, I’m more sensitive than usual to the possibility of being trapped into a health care environment that I don’t want and can’t control.

Obama’s rally drew a crowd about four times the size of Clinton’s. It sounds like a revival meeting that bordered on a riot.

Officials closed the entrances to KeyArena at about 11 this morning, turning away thousands who had gathered to hear presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama speak at noon.

Doors were locked after KeyArena reached its capacity of about 20,000, officials said. Those who made it inside were not allowed to leave because police wanted to keep those outside from pushing through the doors and forcing themselves in. People outside were banging on glass doors and windows of the arena, as police were trying to maintain peace.

Police sent officers outside into the crowd to push people away from the doors so that no one would get crushed or trampled.

Kathryn Hughes, a senior at Gig Harbor High School, got inside while her friend Hunter Burton, also a Gig Harbor senior, was outside, pressed against a KeyArena glass door.

Burton said he was “furious beyond words. Democracy should not be limited by a stadium’s capacity.”

In addition, Gov. Christine Gregoire endorsed Sen. Obama.

Being that I write all the time about the difference between fantasy and reality and the importance of knowing the difference, I found this documentary Guys and Dolls absolutely fascinating.

It’s about men who have relationships with life-like female dolls that include emotional attachment and sex. Also of interest are the people who design, make and repair the dolls.

Everyone in the film is smart, emotionally literate, articulate and vulnerable. Everyone knows the dolls are fantasy, but it’s a fantasy that seems to bring these men closer to the reality of who they are, something they haven’t found with real human companions.

It made me think of all the human relationships between real people that are really based on fantasy, far more delusional than the relationships these men have with their dolls.

It’s a really brilliant documentary.

I’d love to hear your impressions.

47 minutes. (Warning: doll nudity. NWS)

This is not an article about the new movie, “The Hoax,” starring Richard Gere. But I should point out that I saw an interview with Clifford Irving who wrote the phony autobiography about Howard Hughes and he said that the more fantastic he made his lies, the more people believed them.

Having said that…

Tomorrow, millions of people around the world will celebrate what is arguably the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on some members of the human race by other members of the human race.

Christians celebrate Easter as the day that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Christians believe they will do that same after they die and that non-Christians will be punished for not believing the same.

None of it has ever been supported by any evidence, yet that has not stopped Christianity from being used successfully to manipulate people into submission and irrationality for over two thousand years.

It’s a sad day and certainly nothing that rational people can celebrate with a clear conscience.

This article about the Easter Bunny makes you wonder why people don’t “grow out of” their Christian beliefs.

The Easter Bunny is an example of folklore mythology which children are sometimes taught to believe. Some people don’t approve of teaching of an existence of the Easter Bunny. Not everyone believes in the Easter Bunny, and most, if not all, eventually “grow out of” their belief. Other prominent characters thought of in this way are Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

And Jesus Christ.

And all other human beings who have been turned into gods by our imaginations and superstitions.

UPDATE 4/8/07: Trey Givens adds his own insights and wicked humor to this subject. Love the part about the electric chairs and syringes.

The DaVinci Code turned out to be a much more interesting and thrilling movie than I expected it to be from the reviews.

It is often said that movies are never as good as the books that inspire them, but having never read the book, I cannot make that comparison. My impression is that people who read the book were very disappointed in the movie.

For me it was like watching Casino Royale, the most recent James Bond movie. It seemed contrived in a way to create a sense of drama and to produce thrills but the story was jumbled and confusing. All the thrills, puzzles, and violence, even the self-inflicted kind, seem to exist so the viewer will never look at the story too critically. I had difficuty knowing who was on whose side at different points. Nonetheless I still enjoyed it and its interesting take on the origins of Christianity.

Anybody who’s read anything beyond the official Bible about Christianity knows that the Catholic Church edited the gospels to include sections favorable to protecting their own power over individuals while throwing the rest away, so the basic premise was not new to me and seemed perfectly plausible.

Most of all it was fun to watch my belief that religious people live in their own fantasy worlds–and will do anything to protect their fantasies–enacted on film. I doubt most people saw it that way, which is probably why they didn’t like the movie as much as I did.

Other books related to The DaVinci Code.
Other DVDs related to The DaVinci Code.