Ian Gurvitz > 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

“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

“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 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

“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

“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

“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 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

“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

“(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

“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

“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

“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 Roman Empire collapsed due to war, overexpansion and rampant corruption. The British Empire dissolved due to cultural arrogance and imperialistic hubris. Sadly, as we devolve from Democracy to Idiocracy, America may become the first world power to crumble under the weight of its own stupidity.”
― 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

“Reagan decried Medicare as the foot in the door for socialized medicine. Medicare and Medicare passed in 1965. Fifty years later, even after the Affordable Care Act passed, and then survived a tsunami of Republican opposition and legal challenges, still no socialized medicine. No socialism. No communism. No jack-booted thugs breaking down the door in the middle of the night to force grandma to sign a DNR. More”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“When Bill Maher busts Fox News in a lie, it’s a gotcha moment -- to anyone who reads books and ties their own shoelaces. But not to Fox, because they’re not in the truth game. When Fox is busted in a lie, they simply tell a new one, or tell the same one in a different way. They’re impervious to facts. Or satire. They know they’re lying. They just don’t care. A 2015 report from Punditfact – a partnership between The Tampa Bay Times and Politifact.com – stated that 60% of the facts reported by Fox were false. And I’m sure Roger Ailes isn’t losing sleep over it. (I”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“But as a boomer with Beatles music in my DNA and Lennon songs in my head, every so often I stop and think about the music he might have created over the last 35 years. Then I think of that sad, twisted prick in prison and wish that every morning you could queue up outside his cell, and when he stuck his head out to get his breakfast, you could step up and punch him in the face. I’d wait in that line. But, I wouldn’t shoot him, because violence doesn’t solve anything. Though”
― 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

“Despite the fact that a Supreme Court Justice can be impeached for treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, apparently being delusional doesn’t make the cut. Maybe the problem is that 58% of Americans also believe in the devil. I guess it’s tough to recognize insanity when you’re living in the asylum. But”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“When 99% of the world’s scientists agree that burning fossil fuels is adversely affecting the planet, and 10,883 out of 10,885 peer-reviewed papers confirm it, and yet a United States Senator steps on to the floor and attempts to rebut the facts by holding up a snowball, we have officially entered The Shithead Zone. But”
― 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

“What’s ironic is that the party decrying the Death Tax is also the party of hard work and self-reliance. They hate freeloaders and welfare queens. So, why are they so outraged over the prospect that there might be a few less over-privileged little shits in the world? They don’t seem to be worried about the depletion of our natural resources, climate change, erratic weather patterns, rising sea levels, diminishing water supplies, polluted water, polluted air, rampant wild fires, gun violence, and fracking, but they’re flipping out over the notion that our American way of life will disappear if we choke off our supply of Paris Hiltons. The”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“To date, some 108 billion people have lived and died on Earth. Yet, we still think our individual lives are so fabulous that we celebrate them daily on social media. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Not anymore. It’s the un-promoted life that’s not worth living. Know thyself has morphed into flaunt thyself. Once upon a time, fame was tangentially related to talent, hard work, and accomplishment. Now the metric for evaluating a life is who’s got more Facebook friends, Twitter, or Instagram followers. We”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Just as post-Civil War Reconstruction gave rise to the KKK and John Birch Society, Barack Obama’s 2008 victory over Grandpa Munster and his ditzy night nurse kicked off a right wing freak-out. JFK’s declaration in his 1960 inaugural address that “the torch has been passed to a new generation” was a beacon of hope for the future. This inaugural torch was picked up by a mob of angry villagers and they rampaged into town shrieking about socialism. The”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Even the weekend chat shows seem to be designed for maximum noise and minimum analysis. They get the lefty and the righty on screen, throw the raw meat of the latest controversy in front of them, and watch them rip at each other. It’s not a dialogue in the sense of an exchange of ideas intended to arrive at the truth. It’s more of a talking points cage match.”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“Thanks to an emphasis on abstinence-only sex education, nine of the ten states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy are red states. In Mississippi, the sex education curriculum teaches students that homosexuality is illegal. In”
― 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

“Ultimately, we get what we ask for. The culture has been dumbed down for our consumption because we consume it. Junk food wouldn’t sell if we didn’t eat it. Crap movies wouldn’t get produced if we didn’t pay to see them. Crap TV wouldn’t get made if we didn’t watch it. We’re not only what we eat. We’re also what we see and what we buy. Our culture is a reflection of who we are and how we think. We have met the enemy and he is us. Whether”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America

“The other argument is that it’s a privacy issue, the fear being that if the freedom-hating, monolithic U.S. government knew who had what weapons, they could just roll into town with a list of how many guns Buford’s got hidden under the floorboards, and confiscate the hell out of his freedom. Interesting how the same people who criticize the federal government for being a bloated, incompetent bureaucracy simultaneously fear it for being organized enough to plot an attack against its own citizens.”
― Ian Gurvitz, WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America