FacePalm Sunday I (American Revelation III, Part Two.)

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. ~Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring.

It's Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. Needless to say, Conservative Christians are busy politicizing it already.

Apparently because "Fuck you, that's why." (And how exactly is this Christian?)

Ya know, maybe it's just me, but I was taught there's a place and time to leave the ideology at home and observe something greater than your own self, because it's not all about you. Christmas and Easter were such times, at least according to what I was taught.

Oh, wait, I'm not the only one after all. I also find it amusing that a lot of people took the time to light Mr. Sullivan up with Bible verses.

Of course Michael Quinn Sullivan claims the media refers to him as a "Far-right warlord" and "Far-right Mandarin" and that "Establishment Republicans hate him too.

Narrator Voice: I'm a former establishment Republican, and I've never heard of this asshole. So, if I had to guess I'd say he's one of those people who thinks it really is all about him.

I mean, seriously, don't these people ever get tired of being so monomaniacal and tedious? Can't these fucking people turn this shit off even for one damned day?

I mean, maybe it's just me again, but I don't see something like "Virus that will kill me" and immediately  think "Oh, this is a good time to attack my political opponents and glorify myself." The first thing I'm thinking is "I'm going to stay the fuck home."

I really don't understand how these people are hearing the rest of us say "We don't want you to die" and interpreting that as some sort of a threat.

Of course, like I said yesterday none of this is really about whether Christians can go to church or not. If these people wanted to. A lot of these churches have large scale video equipment and they all have computers and cell phones just like everybody else. If they wanted to, the Pastors could go to the church with a minimal team to run it all, and do a service remotely, and every single member of the church that wanted to could get out their cell phones or their computers, or even cast it to their big screen TV, or even broadcast their own self and participate by themselves or with their families right from the comfort of their own living room thanks to the miracles of modern technology. Where ever two or more are gathered, yo.

Trust me, when I was a kid or young man, I'd have loved to have the option to live-stream the church service while sitting on the couch and playing video games. Believe me, if you say something compelling or interesting I'll pause the game.

And nobody needs to go to one particular building and gather together with a bunch of people to experience or talk to God. Either God is everywhere or He isn't. It's that simple.

But of course it's not about that, and it never was, or these fucking people would not be getting arrested for protesting essential medical services in the middle of a fucking pandemic.

Do I personally like abortion? No. Do I realize that it might occasionally be necessary for women to stay alive? Yes. Besides that, these clinics also provide other services like birth control and counseling and stuff like that. In fact they do a lot more of that on a day to day basis than providing abortions.

And again, if you're pro-life...even pro-your-own-life, what in the hell is so hard about "Stay the fuck home?

This isn't about that. Like I said these people think they're going to use this virus shit, and the countermeasures against it, as a means to force a confrontation between their shitty selfish ideology and religion and the State. Why? So that if they win, they can basically commit mass murder by proxy and they think it won't happen to them because they're the "good" people and that they'll get to bask in glory and political power for ever and ever. Seriously, the thought that they're going to die does not usually enter their minds on a normal day.

And this isn't a normal day, and this virus doesn't give a fuck about your ideology or religion and will kill you just the same. If you are a warm body, you qualify. But of course, these people are so vested in the idea that there must be some kind of hierarchy in the world that they're incapable of understanding that COVID-19 is a virus and doesn't know who they are, much less care about them.

And in fact, they're actively trying to weaponize this shit to try to take out their imagined enemies, because they simply cannot understand the idea that at this point it's humanity vs. the virus.

They refuse to understand that in real medical or scientific terms, being "covered in Jesus's blood" is not a thing. The virus doesn't know who Jesus is. No, all things really do not work together for good, and it's not a just world. Sometimes you have to go out and make justice, or even survival. Sometimes, refusing to do the right thing, or even the necessary thing, just means you're going to end up covered in blood and then destroy yourself when you realize what you've done...unless you're a sociopath. These people have become so divorced from reality and the idea that actions have consequences because they live somewhere that's historically been pretty remote from physical threats that affect the rest of the world, that they're trying to ignore it and hope it goes away. It won't, and the longer this kind of stupidity goes on the more they're not only risking their own lives...but everybody else's too.

 On a base level this isn't about Jesus and it isn't about conservatism. This is about sticking the biggest middle finger up at the rest of us that they possibly can. It's about trying to force some kind of stupid conflict, because they think they'll win.

Everything is partisanship. They are incapable of understanding that there are times when all people need to act together to deal with a bigger threat. They simply do not understand that what's behind Door #1 is a very nonpartisan force of death and destruction that even now is going to hit them harder than it does everybody else. Not because somebody engineered it to hurt them or because of Satan or this, that or the other thing.

But because they are being stupid and refusing to follow medically necessary guidelines.

These fucking people don't see science the way I was taught to (In Christian schools, by Christians) that it's simply a way to understand how the universe works. They see science and everything else but what's inside their own little far-right "Conservative" borderline fascist white wealthy theocratic bubble as a competing religion that must be one-upped somehow, if not destroyed.

And it's that hubris that is going to kill them if this crap does not stop.

These people would turn Easter, the day of celebrating Christ's resurrection and humanity's redemption from sin into a new day of the dead, not for some god or higher purpose, but for Capitalism, Patriarchy, Whiteness and Donald Trump.

And ya know, I'm very much starting to think that on an individual basis, people who are like that deserve what they will get. What's at issue here, is there's no way for their stupidity to only affect them and the wider society...including a lot of their own people who aren't the ones making these bullshit ideological decisions...does not deserve what it's going to get from this stupid bullshit.

This is where we're at, facing a virus with an infection rate that grows exponentially that affects the old, the ill and other vulnerable people at a disproportionate rate.

One of the central messages that I've always gotten from Christianity and religion in general is that it's not all about you, and you have to think of other people. I mean, is not the central message of Christianity in general and Evangelicalism in particular to preach the Gospel of Christ to all nations for the salvation of the world? Doesn't that, on a basic level, require thinking about other people?

How did we go from what the Bible actually says to conservative Christianity basically being a cult of political power and whiteness?

I don't know.

But I do know that if it doesn't stop being that, these people could face an entirely self-inflicted holocaust. If that's what they want to do, okay, but there's no way that their mass death will not harm or kill other people nor devastate our nation for everybody else that's left in it whether they socially distance and keep themselves safe or not. There's roughly 330 million people in the United States. Roughly 25% of people are conservative Christians. So call it 83 million people. If half of those people get sick, that's 41 and 1/2 MILLION people. That number of deaths overwhelm not just America's medical infrastructure but the world's and cause many, many more people to get sick and die, and not just from this virus either. Such a thing would not simply imperil American culture, nationhood or small-L, small-D liberal democracy...it would put our very existence at risk, and that of humanity as a whole because short of somehow isolating us from themselves to the point of inhumanity, there's no way they would not risk Apocalypse themselves.

If this is left unchecked, millions, even billions of people could die, whole nations and societies might perish. Civilization on a global scale would be placed at risk.

This situation was always going to be bad, we knew that going in. You can see that dynamic right now in Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York. But right-wing authoritarianism has a way of creating a lot more death than necessary.

These people are trying to force a confrontation between themselves and the rest of the world, which is something they've always dreamed about doing...because they think Jesus will come back and save them while zapping the rest of us into charcoal briquettes or something.

The problem with this particular illogical bullshit is that right now, we face a threat that is utterly blind to religion and social structures and wealth. Ignoring that it is that will create a genocide.

And there's nothing Christian about that. Nothing at all.

Part One.

Facepalm Sunday II (Part Three)