We inhabit one of those “many worlds” Hugh Everett talked about. I know this because, when I was a kid, “dilemma” was spelled “dilemna.”
I swear it’s true. A surprising percentage of people who attended school between the ’50s and ’80s (all over the English-speaking world!) remember this, apparently, but the dictionaries no longer back us up. All sorts of theories abound (a top contender is apparently textbook typo), but I think Wickham’s Razor, which argues that the most complicated idea must be true, points to a glitch in the branching of alternate universes.
Anyway—all that on a bleary day-before-Christmas-Eve because further evidence has come to light. This cannot be the same universe we once inhabited: Pat Robertson (you know, the nutball evangelical Pat Robertson) is advocating for the legalization of marijuana. No, really.
Still not convinced? Well, my new favorite conservative evangelical, Bryan Fisher, who wants to wipe out the grizzly bear scourge and thinks we’ve gone soft because medals of honor don’t get doled out anymore for killing a lot of people (in a Christian manner), points to the real answer.
We’ve been taken over while we slept. Our new overlords, courtesy of Barack Obama? “Indian tribes”!
President Obama likes the “U.N. Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” He says it can “help reaffirm the principles that should guide our future.”
The State Department added helpfully that although the declaration is not legally binding, it “carries considerable moral and political force and complements the president’s ongoing efforts to address historical inequities faced by indigenous communities in the United States.”
This declaration – which carries”considerable moral and political force,” don’t forget – contains this little gem of a paragraph, in Article 26:
“Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired,” and nations “shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources.”
In other words, President Obama wants to give the entire land mass of the United States of America back to the Indians. He wants Indian tribes to be our new overlords.
Yes, back in the old universe, things were very, very different.
