Friday, June 6, 2008

The New Crusaders

Unfortunately the most, and effectively only, honest words to escape George W. Bush's mouth during his Presidency he was forced to retract due to political pressure (and certainly not because he really believed he misspoke). It was his statement right after 9/11 about the "Crusade." Trust me that that blithering troglodyte will, at least eventually, be historically known as first and foremost (by a bazillion miles) a religious wacko and basically nothing else, even if his (secretly) real religion is Satanism or something akin to it. Forget the standard routine about his mediocre (at best) intellect, incompetence, arrogance and warmongering bloodlust (psychopathy). While those attributes are very true, they're but secondary symptoms of the much larger disease of religious fanaticism.

Though the chickenshit corporate media won't touch the subject, the facts of Bush's twisted "faith" are in plain view. Bob Woodward's book (whose title currently eludes me) based on interviews with him mentions his "answering to the Higher Father" as opposed to his listening to his own actual father. And sometime in '03 he flat-out told a Palestinian journalist that he was (somehow) literally instructed by "God" to invade Iraq. (How literally are we talking about as far as his possibly, or at least conceivably, being controlled by a malevolent alien)? Good Christ, that's just supremely illegal (against the First Amendment) for a so-called (in his case) American to wage war while being under the influence of religion!

In terms of total influence by monotheism in politics, the US is rivaled only by Iran. True, it's a different, slicker, used car salesman, more sugar-coated version of it ("Christianity") than the more overt Iranian version; but no less pervasive. (Monotheism has nothing, zip, absolutely zilch to do with the actual Single Creator if there is one). For example, the fundies have crept into the military in a rather substantial way. They virtually run the Air Force Academy now... And we're now forced to endure (virtual) church on prime time TV. Not long ago I found myself (briefly) watching American Idol where about 12 or so of the contestants were merrily caroling a song about Jesus... Here's hoping, in the biggest way, that we're not headed for a full-fleged theocracy like A Handmaid's Tale.

Those who are true democrats don't have any personal need to believe in a Single Creator. That is, the concept of "One God" (or any kind of single ruler from the unknown) is antithetical to pluralistic rule by sane consensus; not to be confused with malevolent groupthink (primitive mob mentality). People of the truly democratic persuasion reject anything and everything of the known and unknown that even vaguely smells of singular, iron-fisted totalitarianism. Therefore the perhaps greatest irony of all time is that a staggeringly huge percentage of Americans in particular - of the land where democratic republicanism is allegedly cherished - are as anti-democratic as the lowly, sad, stinky little people of Biblical times... And that goes for plenty of secular people as well.

That's not saying there positively isn't a (single) "God." No one knows for sure. It's good to keep an open mind. However, how can a truly higher being, especially one as incomprehensibly powerful as a Single Creator, even be concerned with matters as shallow, trivial, meaningless as faith/belief; or frivolities like (ego-based) praise and worship? Aren't actions/deeds all that matter? I'd wager that's the case. Hopefully it will be proven someday.

1 comment:

brian said...

I agree with much of this and couldn't have said it better myself. Except the part about there not being a singular intelligence. It certianly isnt an earth "god", but is more like the totality of all the universe.