Mirror Universe Christianity., Part One

It is our conviction and we believe that both men and women are created by the Almighty. Both have equal rights. Women can pursue an education, women can pursue a career, and women can play a role in society – just like men. ~Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Last Tuesday I saw this, but then before I could react to it, Google Chrome crapped out on me.

What are these people, the fucking Taliban?

A woman died...and these idiots are more concerned that she kept her skirt from flying up...than they are that a person died.

Modern "Conservatism" in a nutshell, ya'll. Just sayin.'

I used to be a conservative, a Christian, and a Republican...and I can't hack this kind of lack of empathy. I just can't do it, If I said something like that on TV...after awhile I'd probably blow my own brains out from the shame of it alone.

But this crap is more or less Christianity, filtered through the dark Mirror Universe from Star Trek.

I started out as a Baptist, and many of the religious laws Baptists are supposed to live by...no dancing, no drinking alcohol, a theological hostility to LGBT rights, etc...would be accepted by and familiar to any Muslim, including members of the Taliban.

So naturally, here are a shitload of members of the Falwell family dancing and drinking at a club in Miami...and this sort of situation would get any Liberty University student expelled. That's leaving aside Jerry Junior's "Pool Boy" scandal from awhile back.

I recently read an article that just went on and on about the dirty dealings, financial shenanigans, and political bullshit of the Falwell Dictatorship at Liberty University. Far from being sorry, even if only sorry that he got caught, Junior got his pets in the IT department to downgrade the photos in question in searches originating from the University's ISP. Because of course, in their world who gets to dance and drink and have sex isn't "Whoever wants to" like it is in secular America...or even most churches anymore. In their world who gets to do what is not the result of who has the capability to do X or Y, let alone the desire. Who gets to do this, that or the other thing comes down to "Who has the power to do so."

And remember this: The answer is always, ALWAYS going to be "Not you."

I mean, personally I feel like why bother setting up all these arbitrary, stupid rules for others to follow when you're not going to follow them yourself...but then I don't like hypocrisy.

I never liked or much cared for Jerry Falwell Senior, but I'm pretty sure he didn't advocate for the idea that conservative or Evangelical leaders could live Bohemian lifestyles like 19th century European aristocracy...while being a part of a political movement that demands that women who are falling to their deaths keep their skirts down while avoiding burning to death in a towering inferno.

But ya know, of course that's not even the half of it with these people.

They don't just want to party it up while you get to live like it's Taliban-era Afghanistan. If you're poor, they want to party it up and dance and drink and have forbidden gay sex with their pool boys and while you either starve to death or die from lack of health care.

They will also 100% reserve the right to be offended if they see you dying in the street from a preventable illness or starvation, while they're leaving the club...and I wouldn't be surprised if some idiot has suggested putting the homeless or the poor in concentration camps, just so that rich conservatives can avoid having to see the results of their shitty beliefs.

Never mind that the truth is that social programs like Medicaid and SNAP cost very little, or that SNAP in particular generates two dollars in our economy for every one that's put into it.

The rich see that as money that they should be getting. Fuck you, I've got mine.

Oh, and of course as of late last night there's war-talk again, because rebels in Yemen hit a couple of oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia with cruise missiles and drones.

It's not just that these people basically want to destroy America and kill those Americans that they don't like while they starve out a majority of their own voter base and destroy our environment and standing in the world while they do it..for no better reason than they think they'll make money, or our constitutional system of laws doesn't give them everything they want, or enough power, or whatever.

It's that they're perfectly willing to be the bitches of Saudi Arabia...the country from which 15 of the 9/11 hijackers came...while they do it. Let the Saudis fight their own damn wars, I say.

The people currently running the majority of our government don't see America as their country and governing it well as their job. They see it...and us...as a resource pool they can use for their own ends and financial purposes.

Assholes like Falwell Jr. and Trump see shitheads like MBS as more their fellows than other Americans like you or me.

Now I don't usually do this, but I'm going to share an element of personal horror that very much goes with the current situation.

I know people of a huge variety of political inclinations and otherwise walks of life.

I am here to tell you, that I know people...including someone that a younger me once loved very deeply...who are poor as dirt, or who don't work, or who've never been able to get it all together because they were never taught basic life skills like balancing a checkbook or how to maintain something like a decent credit score...who think all this crazy shit means their ship will come in and they'll all get rich, if they just believe in it all hard enough.

Yes, even people who don't work...who haven't worked in a dozen years or more who have no logical way to have anything.

This morning I was treated to the deeply weird spectacle of a former lover that I've occasionally conversed with of late, who has no car, no job and no money...not to mention no contacts there, and who is not in good health...reserving a moving truck because she thought God told her that she was somehow going to get enough money to buy a house in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan within a month.

A place where there are not that many jobs, outside of a couple of small cities, a place where you have to have a car, where you have to be tough enough to withstand the elements and your own health problems at least long enough for an ambulance to cover a pretty long distance.

I pointed all this out, but she held on with all the smug piousness one can expect of a person whose mind has been poisoned by false doctrines like the Prosperity Gospel.

So I emotionally and mentally washed my hands of the whole mess, let her figure it out.

Yes, you certainly could make the argument that those people are mentally ill or stupid or have been deliberately misinformed and uneducated...in some cases by some of the very criminal sociopaths now running our country, I have made all of these arguments at one point or another.

But unless we all stand up and stop these motherfuckers...it's a lot of those people, in addition to many far more innocent children, disabled people, elderly people, etc. who will go in the first wave if these motherfuckers ever get their wish.

Jesus said to help the poor and give them food and show compassion. Evangelicalism basically stands for starving the poor.

Our country is being run into the ground by people who would rather preach at a person who is dying of starvation than give them food.

We have to stand up and do something, and we have to stand up for everybody, whether we necessarily like them or not, or whether they will even appreciate it or not.

Because if we don't...what does that say about us?

Because it's the right thing to do.

Because someone has to, if not protect these people from themselves, protect them from the predators who've brainwashed them.

Because if we don't, who are we?

Vote the bastards out. All of them, get rid of the Republicans, vote them out and then run them out on a rail...and then start taxing the churches.

Because if these absolute motherfuckers care more about the fact that somebody preserved their body modesty while falling to their death, than that the person died, they have no damned business holding any kind of special place in our society...or any place at all, really.

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Part 2.