Many years ago I had a boss who singlehandedly inspired me to create a new classification for stupidity. I had realized long before that all of us are stupid sometimes, some of us more often than others. Realizing our occasional tendency toward saying and doing stupid things, we can compensate to a great extent and trust our friends, family members, spouses, and children to tell us when we're being stupid. But my boss was in a whole different category. He was too stupid to comprehend that he was stupid. He could not compensate for his stupidity because he didn't realize he WAS stupid.

In my experience, the same is true when it comes to reactions to the homosexuality of others. There are people who recognize that they've been programmed by those around them to react with "eeewww" whenever they consider two people of the same gender being physically, romantically involved. They can recognize that well-programmed response and counter it with careful thought and consideration. This has nothing to do with their own attractional orientation, although the more self-aware and secure they are in their orientation, the more easily they accept others having different orientations

But there are some who have been infected by their families and communities (including religious institutions) with the most extreme form of homophobia. Most often these unfortunate folks have had reason to suspect at some earlier time that they might be attracted to those of their own gender, but they've been taught that if this were the case they'd be among the most despicable, depraved creatures on the face of the earth. In the same way my former boss was too stupid to realize he was stupid, these folks are too homophobic to realize they are homophobic. Their desire to stamp out acceptance of gay and lesbian people arises from their desire to stamp out the same-gender attractions that continue to arise within themselves. Acting against gay and lesbian people gives them a sense of power and control over their own internal feelings that so completely terrify them.

Perhaps God can redeem them at some future time, in this life or the next, but their social redemption is generally beyond the ability of us mere mortals. More's the pity because I'm convinced that God didn't design my boss to be that stupid (something earlier in his life programmed him to be that way), nor did God design any of us to be so homophobic as to question God's creation of those whose natural gender affections run counter to our own. Still, God judges what's in our hearts and if there's hatred and bigotry there, no matter how carefully calculated and reasoned, even if based on interpretations of scripture, we're going to be in trouble.

of economics is that the complexities of human behavior can be reduced to mathematical formulas which can then be used to predict the future. Thus we can have Allen Greenspan expressing complete faith in his formulas while, at the same time, complaining that the world didn't work the way it "should" have because "people got greedy."

Evidently there was no room in his formula for the very predictable levels of greed that psychologists, social scientists, theologians and historians could and did predict would become the monkey wrench in the works (as we humans always become the monkey wrench in any works which allows an opening for us to do so).

In truth, the actions and reactions of human behavior tend to follow the dictates and randomness of chaos theory with "tipping points" that can't be precisely predicted (thus the title "chaos" theory) but that, nevertheless, result in massive and seemingly sudden shifts of awareness and behavior. The realities of climate change are likely to operate the same way... not much happening, not much happening, not much happening,... then at some unpredictable tipping point, massive things happening all at once.

Just as some Christians say to those who worship the Bible in place of God, "Your God is too small," so we all need to remember that, when it comes to economists, their economic theories, and their ability to predict what will actually happen,... their formulas are always too small to actually predict real life occurrences. We trust them too much and listen to their justifications too readily at our peril.

But there's a subtle difference between our fear and theirs... I hope it won't be too subtle for you to understand.

We are afraid of the continuation of almost eight years of the most dictatorial, dishonest, carefully-hidden, constitutionally ignorant (in both senses of the words), vile, evil, destructive government in the history of the US. Our fears are based on demonstrable reality and recent historical facts.

Without any verifiable evidence, "they" are afraid Obama/Biden is trying to work some kind of destructive subterfuge in and on our nation on behalf of some massive-but-undefinable evil force.

We are justifiably afraid because there is a great deal of evidence that McCain will really just be McSame and we see ample evidence of what the results of that will be.

They are afraid of the boogey man.

Do you see the difference?