It’s 2016. Are You Kidding Me.
It’s 2016. No, I’m not reminding you what year it is (it’s April, get that shit on lockdown). I’m saying it’s fucking 2016. This has become the mantra of the frustrated, horrified, embarrassed masses who cannot believe we’re still having some of these conversations. Is a transgender person going to assault me in the bathroom? Is my Muslim neighbor secretly a terrorist? Is a Mexican going to come into America and make crime stuff happen? If a black life matters, does that mean mine doesn’t? Is an abortion okay if it happens six hundred miles away in my neighboring state? (Answers: no, wait what, are you fucking serious, oh my god go fuck yourself, and here please take this brick and smash yourself in the face with it). It’s baffling to witness with what ferocity right wing reactionary politics still insists upon heaving its bloated, fetid corpse up against common human decency, like the gross sweaty dude who keeps leaning in between you and the nice gentleman you’re trying to chat with at the bar on the absolutely asinine assumption you’d rather be talking to him, a moral and ethical cockblock of epic proportions.
But it’s not like this is a new phenomenon. Social entropy has always had to swim upstream against the current of traditionalism. The one thing we will always have in common with our fellow man, no matter how many centuries separate us, is a shocked dismay that we apparently still gotta put up with this shit.
With that in mind, let’s look back over a few millennia worth of Are You Fucking Kidding Me Right Nows.
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45,900 BCE – Grassy Savanna in modern-day Maasai Mara, Kenya
PUT THE ROCK DOWN, TIFFANY. Put. It. Down. You are literally smashing the bajeezus out of that poor wildebeest. I don’t care if your mom always used a big dull rock to carve her wildebeests. Your mom was a big dull rock. We’ve had sharpened stones for like a hundred years, and those little fuckers will slice up an ibex faster than you can say “monsoon season.” Get with the times, Tiff. Here, be careful with the sharp pointy end. Jesus, Tiffany. It’s 45,900 BCE.
15,300 BCE – Lascaux Caves, France
Are you serious right now? Herb, look at this. This, up here. Who drew this. Was this Carl’s work? That stupid asshole. He just drew a circle with four lines under it and a scribble that I’m assuming is supposed to be a mane. CARL. C’mere. You see this? Now this is a horse. There’s depth, shading, dimensionality, contouring…what’s the point in us making strides in artistic realism if you’re going to come in here with your paints and chalks and what-have-you and put this derpy looking pokey horse crap up here with our cave hyenas and bulls and I mean fuck, Herb even drew an Auroch over here that I could swear is jumping out at me from the stone. You’re a disgrace, Carl. It’s 15,300 BCE, for crap’s sake.
304 BCE – Salona, Dalmatia, modern-day Croatia
Antoninus, if I have to hear you rattle on with your conspiracy theory bullshit about the Christians one more time, I’ll stone you myself. Do you seriously think that just because they worship one god and one prophet that somehow that jeopardizes the integrity of ours? I mean the state religion is going a little off the rails nowadays anyway. I read recently that they’re adding “Greg the god of apricots” and “Tom the god of brisk walking” to the pantheon which, I dunno, seems kind of stupid. Galerius is a dick, and do you know who Diocletian asked if he should persecute Christians or not? An oracle. A fucking oracle, Antoninus. A goddamn ruler of an empire asked a blind chick on a mountain if he should kill a bunch of people and she apparently said yes. You have GOT to be kidding me. It’s 304 BCE, you putz.
1190 CE – The keep at York Castle, Yorkshire, England
Wait I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly. Did you just say there are a hundred and fifty Jews in there? Just, like, chilling out? And your plan is to murder them? You know, Derek, I kept quiet when you insisted that castle mills were the wave of the future even though I knew they’d be vulnerable to flooding. I didn’t say anything when you got drunk at the pub and yelled about how William the Bastard wasn’t such a bad guy. And I turned a blind eye when you bragged about how your dad hid you and your siblings in the basement when the magnate came through for the Great Survey so he didn’t have to claim you for tax purposes. “My Little Tax Haven” he called you after that, and everybody thought it was sooooooo cute. Well you know what, Derek? Pogroms aren’t fucking cute. If you want to ruin someone’s day, leave the Jews alone and go spend quality time with your wife. EYOOOOO. Guess you better run along and put some opium anointment on that sick burn. Jesus, Derek. It’s 1190. Jews have been here for decades. Pull your head out of your ass.
1532 CE – Ship port, modern-day Guayaquil, Ecuador
Is that…no. It can’t be. Not again. Fuck, it is. Manco, take a look. Fucking Spaniards. Last time they were here that crazy sack of llama crap Pizarro was raving about having “discovered” new land and “conquering” people and I was like “um hiiiiiiii, you mean us? Us people? Who already like live here and do stuff?” That crazy motherfucker stormed in here last time with a horse wearing armor. Manco, can you believe it? Can you imagine how uncomfortable that horse must have been? Poor buddy. When in the name of Viracocha are European dudes gonna stop boating over here like they own the place, giving us all smallpox, babbling on about their God…and all for what, gold? I mean they know gold’s kind of crap, right? It’s all soft and bendy and kinda lame. HEY. SPANIARDS. IT’S 1532, YOU POINTY-HELMETED MORONS. STOP TRYING TO CONQUER PEOPLE. THAT IS SO LAST CENTURY.
1632 CE – Pisa, Italy
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalright, listen, Pope Urban. Can I call you Urb? Urb, I’m not sure how much clearer I can be about this. You see this fancy doohickey-ma-doodad here? It’s called a telescope. Now I realize that keeping up on all the new-fangled scientific advancements isn’t among your top priorities as Pope, what with having to swing that smelly incense thingy all the time, so maybe you should trust us scientists when we say we have tools and we discover stuff with them. Namely, and I know you don’t like me bringing it up again, but I’m being super serious when I say that the earth orbits the sun and this does not in any way threaten you personally. I mean, you’d have to be pretty easily emasculated if basic cosmic truths make you want to send an entire inquisition after a guy. That guy being me, Galileo Galilei, a GODDAMN SCIENTIST WHO KNOWS SCIENCE. I mean Christ on a cross, Urb, it’s 1632 and we’re in the middle of the fucking scientific revolution. Stop being such a crusty fart.