Paradise Lost

Islam is fascism with scriptures, a riot with prayers. Christianity is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rich White Men, Inc., making sure the working poor keep working, and stay poor, not to mention reproducing, so that a new generation can step in once thier parents drop dead. Catholicism? Anglicanism? Worried about keeping their priesthood safe from gays, except for the ones covered by grandfather clauses.

Faith and prayer can lead men to their godly natures, but it appears that when faith becomes organized religion, especially the kind that espouse absolute certainty that it is the only way to God, the usual sicknesses of man emerge: Greed and Thirst for Power. Religion at the beginning of the 21st century has become a twisted virus that feeds on fear and hatred.

I've been hitting the libraries lately, trying to find out just what good "capital-R" Religion has brought to this world. I mean, real good for real people, not just a whore's promise of basking in God's love (or twenty virgins) in the next. I'm having some real trouble, too. Where is the benefit in absolutist superstitions that want us to say "I'm right, but more importantly, you're wrong"? Where is the nation to which Religion has brought peace? Please, if you can tell me of the instances where one of the major religions brought peace anywhere in the world, please contact me, or leave a comment to this blog. I honestly want to find such cases, and I'm hoping I just missed them.

I thought I had found something with Martin Luther King, or Ghandi, but the biographies I've read seem to indicate that it was more their nonviolent philosophies, with origins in their beliefs no doubt, that made the difference in the effectiveness of these great men. In the case of Dr. King, the "real" Christians, the ones who bless us today on talk radio, nationwide, made sure his message stopped on a Memphis balcony. Ghandi? To members of the Christian Right, he was a suspiciously shaded guy who looked a lot like a terrorist. And forget about any resemblance he might have to Jesus Christ. That Christ, that man of peace who said to help the poor has been replaced by a guy who looks suspiciously like George W. Bush. Bring it on, Satan.

Take George Prager, for example. This devout Jew and Christian apologist, purveyor of hatred on "Christian, Conservative" talk radio, often says that he speaks for God. And according to Mr. Prager, boy, is God ever mad at the Muslims. This big mouth doesn't make any bones about the fact that he believes all good Muslims are required by their faith to be terrorists. And he doesn't flinch when faced with questions about the Christian Right that he praises. Does it bother him that these righteous men believe that he and his family will rot in hell for not accepting Christ? I'm sorry, we have a bad connection. Our next caller is Clem, from Hot Springs.

Another fine member of the Theocratic Right, The Rev. James Dobson (or no, it's Dr. James Dobson. These guys love to mix up their honorifics, as if it will somehow sweeten the stink that surrounds them), recently voiced his bitter anger at the Supreme Court's recent ruling that the monument of the 10 Commandments in Texas are OK, because they are historical in nature and don't promote religion. You'd think this makes the Most Rev. Dr. Dobson happy, but no, in his words: If it doesn't promote religion, what good is it? Go read a little bit about the Most High Reverend Doctor Dobson - this guy is a pip. He's right in step with those imams who say the world must come to Allah or die. Dobson won't stop until every human is on his knees, and not just in prayer.

It surprises me that I'm so full of anger at organized religion. Until the last few years, I believed that shared faith and prayer in a community is nothing but a good thing. But I've simply heard too much hate coming from the mouths of religious men. Just as empty men with ugly motives have hijaacked our government and public life in the US, and around the world, it seems, they have also taken what could have been a great hope for humanity. We have already seen the first Christian lunatic terrorists in America. Eric Rudolph called himself a "Soldier in the Army of the Lord". The well-known "Army of God" (I can't bring myself to put a link to their website here. Go find it yourself.) each day names new martyrs who have bombed abortion clinics, threatened or killed medical providers. Members of the US Congress have publicly exhorted these killers. We have a jihad right in our backyard, and it's soldiers look just like us.

What More in the Name of Faith?

The turn of the 21st century finds a world in which hatred, torture and murder are propagated in the name of religion, in the very name of God, of Yahweh, of Allah. People who believe differently send each other to concentration camps like the ones in Abu Ghraib and Guantanimo Bay, and the torture centers of Saudi Arabia. People who call themselves good Christians, Muslims, and Jews are finding new standards of ugliness, intolerance and treachery, all for the love of God.

Not since the 15th century has more damage been done by people with pious words and powerful weapons, articles of faith and bad intentions.

I'm finally coming to the conclusion that it's not religion itself that brings such misery. I don't see a lot of devout Buddhists committing atrocities, or Quakers flaying non-believers. It's the greedy, the power-hungry, the literally insane and the simply rotten-to-the-core who have become the false prophets, poisoning their faiths with the same kind of evil that's been around in one form or the other, forever.

It doesn't matter which religion they choose, or which side of the fence they're on. Randall Terry is not significantly different from Osama bin Laden, James Dobson from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They are all here to sow hatred, to destroy lives, to make the rest of us miserable at best, at worst, slaves. They would use faith, the well of love and understanding that many humans draw on, for the ugliest of goals: to control or destroy.

The tool that all these enemies of humanity invariably use is the idea of absolute, proprietary truth. The notion that they have the real answer and all others are phonies. This absolutism is the kernel of evil that pollutes so many faiths today.

As readers may know, I listen, often with fascination, to the Salem Radio Network. This supposedly Christian company owns stations in hundreds of cities nationwide, often more than one in a market (usually one purely "Christian" and the other with national hosts like Bill Bennett and Michael Savage, pushing a Christian Conservative agenda). The level of ugliness that is delivered by these "religious" phonies is astounding. Last evening, Michael Savage was explaining how the only solution left to "real Americans, the conservatives, the faithful" is to put liberals and secularists into education camps. This was NOT said in jest, or even exaggeration. He has said many times that liberal judges, homosexuals, undocumented immigrants, or simply non-believers (Mr. Savage purports to be a Jew) should simply be dealt with by "a couple in the back of the head," referring to bullets, execution-style. Apparently, the killers of Judge Lefkow's family or the judge in Atlanta, people like Erik Rudolph and Tim McVeigh, are listening. How different are the screeds of the Islamist fanatics who behead Westerners?

Every faith on earth has sane, moderate believers--devout people who take the commandments to love, to help the poor, to heart. Unfortunately, they have lacked the courage, the faith, to let their twisted brethren know that their perversions will not be tolerated, that they may NOT call themselves good Catholics, or Jews, or Muslims, while preaching hatred. Governments that allow religions exemptions from taxes must identify those groups that call themselves "of God" while grasping for political power will no longer have the free ride. I doubt that the US administration that gets so much of its power from these false-faith players would have the courage to stand up to them, but it's past time we start letting the purveyors of misery in the name of Faith know that their time is running out.

I'm afraid of America

Why have so many Americans forgotten so easily the principles upon which this republic was formed? And how has the story of the earliest settlers, who fled the theocracies of Europe to live in a land where they could be left alone to believe freely, or not believe at all, become corrupted and twisted into the false belief that America was begun as a Christian nation?

The only answer that comes to mind is that decades of insidious lies, dressed in the garments of faith but seeking only the absolute power that comes from a population of frightened "true-believers", has eroded the ability of formerly upright Americans to identify bald-faced liars and corrupt bounders when they see them.

The faces of these cynical and power-mad ideologues aren't hard to discern. I remember my Grandmother explaining to me that a person's soul can be seen in their eyes, on their faces, their sins seeping forth like Cain's sign. How can the usually sharp and decent eyes of middle-class American workers not see the truth in the faces of our leaders. You don't have to be a psychic seer to recognize the emptiness and moral cowardice in the face of George W. Bush, a lousy actor propped up by vicious puppet-masters, or the thirsty corruption in the face and dead eyes of his handlers, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and others. These are men who have traded away their souls for the chance to bend the course of history to their own petty needs.

I was talking to a neighbor, a Viet Nam vet who'd been cut loose by his users in the 70's and spent the next two decades regaining his stolen life, which had been wasted by a previous group of ugly men. This was during the 2004 election, and we were talking about the two candidates. "Any man who actually put on the uniform and served his country simply has to be better than a play-acting coward who used his father's connections to get out of the war while waving the flag and cheerleading the rest of us from the sidelines. Surely, Americans can see that." Well, they couldn't, or didn't care, because that callow coward became our president.

I used to think that the ordinary, working Americans I knew from the West side Little Italy of Chicago or the Lower East Mulberry Street neighborhood of New York, or the small ranches of Missouri were a hard bunch to fool. But fooled they were, into believing the exact opposite of the truth, into voting against their own interests and values. Last August, I stood outside an Evangelical church in central Missouri, with a decent man for whom I was doing a job. I asked him why he and his friends wanted Bush to become president. "Because he's like us," he told me. "He believes in country, in family values, in telling the truth. He'll be a decent, honest leader." Here was a man whose financial life had flourished during the Clinton administration. His salary had gone up, jobs were plentiful, and the meager investments in his retirement account were growing healthily. He didn't have to worry about losing one of his three sons to a useless war, because our country was at peace. As long as the country didn't get seriously derailed, his life would be good. But he had been convinced, by other people "like him" loudmouthed opportunists like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the other poisonous proxies of American fascism, that George W. Bush would "turn the country around." He did that, certainly. Within a few months of his taking office, the first foreign attack on the American mainland had taken place, the US economy was about to lose a greater percentage of it's value than any other time in history, we'd be embroiled in a phony "war" on terrorism, and my friend, my friend had been laid off from his good job with a huge telecommunications firm because the new "corporate-friendly" administration had removed regulations that kept Americans working but stood in the way of the profits of a few very rich men. Today, this man, father of five in Central Missouri, is managing a fast-food outlet, making a small fraction of his past salary, using none of the technical skills he had learned to work in telecom. His second-oldest son is in Iraq, and there won't be money to send his children to a decent college. He believes George W. Bush is one of the best presidents ever.

This is why I'm afraid of Americans.