Le Père Noël

J’ai écrit le texte ci-dessous au mois de mai 2011. Noël approchant  j’ai relu cette histoire, et vu la situation au Moyen-Orient, mon opinion n’a pas changé d’un iota. C’est pourquoi je publie à nouveau cet éditorial aujourd’hui.

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Quand j’étais très jeune, j’ai évidemment cru au Père Noël.
Pourquoi évidemment?
Ben, parce que comme tous les enfants de mon âge, j’ai été conditionné et endoctriné. A force de m’entendre répéter que si j’étais un bon petit garçon, Papa Noël viendrait et m’apporterait de jolis cadeaux, j’y ai cru !
C’est normal, non ?

Mais un peu plus tard, quand j’ai été plus a même de réfléchir et de penser pour moi-même, j’ai commencé à avoir des doutes.
Le Père Noël, ce brave homme, il est bien gentil, mais donner des cadeaux a tous les gosses du monde… et en une seule nuit, c’est quand même assez difficile.
Et puis son traineau, il est quand même un peu petit… Et s’introduire dans toutes ces cheminées (malgré sa bedaine) sans se salir … Et se souvenir de tous ces noms et de toutes ces adresses…

Un jour donc, j’en suis venu à la conclusion que tout cela ne tenait pas debout, et j’ai cessé de croire au Père Noël.
J’ai cessé de croire parce que je me suis permis d’analyser la situation et de tirer mes propres conclusions. Je suis heureusement Cartésien, et si les chiffres ne s’additionnent pas proprement, je n’y crois pas.
A en juger la situation dans le monde, Il n’y a malheureusement que très peu d’esprits cartésiens sur notre planète… et c’est la cause de tous nos malheurs.

Il y a encore beaucoup de gens qui, malgré leur âge avancé, croient encore au Père Noël.
Les Musulmans, les Juifs, les Chrétiens, les Hindous… ils croient tous au Père Noël!
Et malgré des preuves irréfutables qu’on les a bernés, ils s’accrochent désespérément  à des croyances moyenâgeuses et sont prêts à s’entretuer à la moindre provocation.

Pourquoi ? Parce qu’ils ont été endoctrinés a un très jeune âge, et parce que les soi-disant défenseurs de la foi, jaloux de leurs prérogatives, leur ont expressément interdit de questionner des niaiseries démodées.
Jésus, Mahomet, Moïse, les prophètes… balivernes ! Rien que balivernes !

Croire a des contes de fées, c’est une chose, mais égorger (au nom de leur dieu miséricordieux) tous ceux qui n’y croient pas, c’est autre chose.
Et c’est ce que font tous ces « croyants » sur tous les continents de notre pauvre planète !
Horreur, horreur, horreur !

Quand a moi, je suis solidement républicain et anti-calotin, et si plus de gens analysaient un peu plus froidement ce que l’on leur débite dans les églises, les synagogues, les mosquées, croyez moi, nos vaches seraient beaucoup mieux gardées !

Alain

 

Hype

Help! I am drowning in hype.
I don’t know if you realize it, but today we are drowning in “hype” and like the sea its level and toxicity is rising every year.
Hype I should remind you, is the extravagant promotion of mediocre people, products or events that are supposed to be life altering.

Visual and audio pollution is already extremely annoying, but hype is advertising’s super bug. It is exceedingly virulent and so far the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) have not come up with any effective vaccine against it.
As a temporary fix, it recommends the wearing of earplugs and gas masks, but there is no guarantee.

Not so long, it was the elections. If Obama (that Negro Muslim not born in America) were elected, we would turn into a Socialist hellhole like Cuba. We would have no choice but pack the car, grab the kids and run for Canada!

With elections thankfully behind us, we now have to cope with Thanksgiving and (ta-tah) BLACK FRIDAY. Hype is trumpeting that it will be smart to spend the night camping outside the store to save a few bucks.

Then Christmas (buy, buy, buy) and (drum roll) the FISCAL CLIFF.
If the Republicans and the Democrats don’t agree on fiscal reforms, America will certainly fall off the surface of the earth.
Then as an after-Christmas bonus, we have the SUPER BOWL (canon salvo). If you don’t buy tickets, you are un-American and deserve to die.

Before that contemporary baloney, we had YK, Year 1000 (Final Judgment Day). Since the end of the world is coming, give all your stuff to the Church to secure a spot in Paradise, or be ready to suffer the torments of HELL.

What about Y2K? Remember that one? In 2000, computers were supposed to go berserk and create panic throughout the civilized world.

Let’s not forget the unrelenting promotion of that insufferable Bieber kid (the new Golden Calf), and the semi-literate bimbo “Spooky Snooki”.

To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I am sending the following Tweet to Hype:
“Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like those as members”.

But hype seldom delivers what it promises. So, starting from now, disregard most of what you hear on radio and television, and to buck the commercial trend, indulge in complimentary, random acts of kindness.

Alain

 

Bible thumpers

I have access to at least a hundred TV channels, and some nights when I cannot sleep, I flip from channel to channel to find something to watch or to anesthetize me.
Invariably I come across the preachers; they are legions and judging by the crowds they minister to, they seem to be doing very well, thank you.

The preachers, (who, I don’t know why are mainly Southerners) endlessly quote the Bible and rhapsodize about Jesus. It always seems that they all knew him personally and are very familiar with his most inner thoughts.
Personally, I was never close to Jesus, but I understand that he was some kind of a do-gooder.

I have always been suspicious of do-gooders and I am not the only one. George Orwell said it better than I could when he wrote “Saints should always be judged guilty, until they are proved innocent”.
Saints make me uncomfortable. They are too… perfect. When I venture to compare myself to a saint, the gap if so frighteningly wide that I get dizzy just thinking about it.

But preachers feel comfortable with saints and have a very good and close relationship with Jesus. It seems that they were schoolmates or something like that. They know all about his life, where he was born, the kind of parents he had, the kind of pranks he used to play on his teachers, and most of all what he did and what he said.

I couldn’t be a preacher, because I have a bad memory and because I am so damn skeptical. Preachers casually mention that Jesus fed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread. Nobody in the audience blinks an eye. But myself, I feel a little dubious…
Preachers have written proof of what they say and two thousand years of history to fall back on. Me, what do I have?  A few copies of National Geographic. What they say and what they show in this magazine is closer to my line of thinking.

I think that it’s great that so many people find salvation listening to preachers, but as I said before, they (being so close to sainthood) make me feel uncomfortable and I quickly switch to “Everybody loves Raymond”, something I can relate to.

Alain

PS: I have found that preachers are very good at inducing sleep. So if you occasionally battle insomnia, put away those nasty little pills and tune in instead to those wonderful fellows who are such marvelous hypnotizers and storytellers.