As sure as my balls are resting on Debbie Schlussel's chin, I do enjoy a good conspiracy theory.
The religious left's political operatives have mounted a shrill attack on a significant portion of the Christian community. Four out of five evangelical Christians supported President Bush in 2004 -- a third of all ballots cast for him, according to the Pew Research Center. Factor in Catholics and members of other conservative religious communities and it's clear that the religious right is the largest voting bloc in today's Republican Party.
Oh, come on, Jimbo. At this point, it's pretty much the other way around. We can't even research Parkinson's with fertility-clinic discards because Dog-Beater Dobson has his panties in a wad at the very thought of it. I'm sure they'll have all those innocent blastocysts adopted out in no time; you can't find a more low-maintenance kid than a microbe that stays in its jar next to the Hummels 24/7.
The religious left took note. Political opportunists in its ranks sought a wedge issue to weaken the GOP's coalition of Jews, Catholics and evangelicals and shatter its electoral majority. They passed over obvious headliners and landed on a curious but cunning choice: the environment. Those leading the charge are effective advocates: LBJ alumnus Bill Moyers of PBS fame, members of the National Council of Churches USA and liberal theologians who claim a moral superiority to other people of faith.
You gotta be fucking kidding me. Is this asshole for real, or does he just watch Faux News between tag-team hits of oxy with Rush Limbaugh? I'm sure that'd make you say some giggly shit, but come on. Political opportunists? How about Rick Santorum, hyping everything from man-on-dog sex (on which I'm sure he's an authority) to how the Democrats are like nazis (because it's only wrong to polemically call Dear Leader a nazi; everyone else is fair game)? How about the political opportunists who hung on Terri Schiavo's family like a flock of comb-over vultures, sanctimoniously cawing at the rest of us pagans? Gay marriage? Evolution? A whole host of shit that doesn't matter to anyone's life, not one iota?
But the perfidious Demo-rats, and their minions in the Catholic laity, have the nerve to talk about the environment. Could it be remotely possible that that is an issue that affects Americans' actual lives, with autism rates skyrocketing, cancer running full-tilt, air and water being befouled whenever regulators turn their backs for a second?
If there is a God, and He really does love the likes of James Watt, then I'm walking into Hell through the front door. I mean it. If an eternity in Heaven means an eternity with the likes of Watt, Santorum, Cat-Killer Frist, the goofball creationism posse and the rest of the Horst Wessel gang, then fuck that shit. No thanks. How much fun could it possibly be?
Nicholas von Hoffman of the NY Observer lands a flurry of punches right in the collective breadbasket of these chumps.
If reports filtering east from the Air Force Academy are correct, there has been an outbreak of extreme Jesus-ism in that undistinguished institution of lower learning. A Pentagon official said the military would look into complaints lodged by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State to the effect that the Christers, the fundies and the holy rollers have taken over the joint.
If the past is a guide, the Pentagon inquiry will begin with an extended blackout on all information while another one of their interminably ineffectual investigations is conducted. After many months, a report containing nothing we don’t already know and an official tsk-tsk will be issued, top personnel will be given medals and promotions, and the academy will go back to the status quo ante. O Lord, smite the evildoers and turn the iniquitous inhabitants of Liberal Land into pillars of horse pucky.
The reports coming out of Colorado include allegations that cadets who resist pressure to go to chapel are marched to their barracks in what is called the "heathen flight"; classes open with prayers; the football coach flies a banner in the locker room proclaiming that "I am a member of Team Jesus Christ"; the chaplain is promising eternal damnation to cadets who show insufficient zeal in converting pagans to the faith; and a Jewish cadet has been catechized to the effect that the Holocaust is divine payback for Jews having murdered Jesus.
But wise parents still might have second thoughts about encouraging their daughters to go to the academy, where the missionary position has a decided double meaning. Almost 150 women cadets have complained of being sexually assaulted by the male Christians in residence.
Islam and Christianity both have a sex fixation: Practitioners can’t get enough of it, even as they despise the thought of it. Their self-inflicted contradictions drive them crazy, and so they drive us non-believers nuts trying to take away our dirty pictures and our evil Web sites. They make their sex problems worse for themselves by immuring themselves in exclusive communities in which their ceaseless animadversions on the subject set them off into paroxysms of clandestine lust.
There ya go; that's the current evangelical fervor in a nutshell. Making "heathens" run the gauntlet; pushing their faith on everyone else, whether they want it or not; and all sorts of weird hypocrisies about sex. Gee, I can't imagine why I gave up on church when I was ten years old. It's not the spirituality I have the problem with; it's the arbitrarily codified control mechanisms put in place by eminently corruptible and fallible humans, with which they exert unwarranted influence over other humans.
If you want to have a personal spiritual relationship with God, great; I'm actually a big believer in the more therapeutic aspects of that for many people. But the more humans and human institutions become "interpreters" and "messengers" of the divine message, the more the truth of that message gets either diluted by ignorance or polluted by political purposes.
But von Hoffman's final point is right -- 50 million Left Behind books ought to have sent us hedonistic sybarites a message. As we say in the 'hood, it's on, it's been brought, we've been served, and we better get our shit together before all our kids are forced to indoctrinate in this anti-empirical claptrap.
That Pravda gave a public pulpit to a professional dipshit/crybaby like James "Low" Watt tells you where they're at. The whole media; they seriously think that giving equal time to scientific nonsense -- or outright lies and superstition -- is some sort of factual ecumenicism, that they're presenting two equal sides to a story.
Well, no. The Grand Canyon was not created by the Noah's Ark flood; the great thing about the canyon is that all the strata are quite easy to access and test. No digging required. Adam & Eve, if they existed at all, did not co-exist with dinosaurs; anyone who tells you otherwise is pulling your leg, whether they know it or not.
Science not only proves these facts, it demonstrates how the proof was arrived at, so that later discoveries that change or obviate the methodology can be taken into account. This, as we also say in da 'hood, is useful; that is, it has practical utility. You can use it to improve on that discovery, or discover something else. You can use it to broaden your base of empirical knowledge, which is what scientists are supposed to do.
The Bible cannot be used for any of those things. This does not mean it's useless; as we've said many times before, many of the tales within can be used as simplistic renderings of everyday ethical and moral dilemmas. (Of course, there are also many repugnant episodes in the Bible, so guess what -- we use discretion to decide that we don't offer our child as bloody sacrifice, just because we think God is telling us to do so.)
The media has simply got to step and up and start making some of these distinctions. It would not be editorializing to report that no serious scientist makes any sort of argument for creationism (and that's really what "intelligent design" is; dressing up a cheap whore in new clothes just gives her a new wardrobe); reporting that would be called a "fact". It would even be "news".
So get your fake science back in church already, where it belongs, and let us hell-bound heathens get on with our lives already. Go handle your snakes and chatter in your tongues, and leave us alone. We don't all have to be just like you. We don't all have to believe in Your God. If we're wrong, then that's between us and Him, so stay the fuck out of it and mind your own business. Quit dragging what's left of this nation's scientific and technological greatness back to your stupid-ass Scopes trial. The rest of the world has accepted advances in knowledge and moved forward. That's why they call it progress.
***Gee, I can't imagine why I gave up on church when I was ten years old. ***
ReplyDeleteDid you really? At 10? Me too!
Being raised hard-core Catholic in the 1960's will either made you a nutjob or an atheist.
I just don't often hear from other folks who figured it our so young. except of course, Joni Mitchell..."god goes out the chimney, like childhood Santa Claus..."