... and this Honorable Court. That's the header for an event which might be more aptly called
Justice Sunday II: Apostle Paul's Revenge.
(Atheist Rant warning)
Featured speakers are Zell Miller, Tony Perkins of Focus on the Family, and the usual cast of religious opportunists. Even ex-con
Chucky Colson managed to break away from his true passion, The
Wilberforce Forum which promotes creationism and other noble pseudoscientific and political bullshit, to give a presentation on Prison Ministries; he should know having served time in the pen after being convicted in the Watergate Scandal. Story is Colson was born again, in jail, and turned over a new leaf of morality all praise be to YVWH. It was an odd conversion which left this man claiming the mantle of Christian purity had reformed him, and set him right after Nixon blew up, considering his ugly mug was all over the MSM a few weeks ago defending Tricky Dick and flogging the FBI Agent who put an end to the White House felonies as 'unethical'. His unique amoral perspective was further enhanced last night on CNN where he responded in part to the Rove scandal with "I don't get the problem".
It's tempting to score some cheap political points with the souls these crooks prey on. But the fact is the victims, mostly working Americans, have been just as fucked over as the rest of us, and probably even more so.
Not that we lovable Godless atheist bloggers at UTI are broken up about that, considering their stated hopes include ruling over our hospital wards and bedrooms from the thrones of a Christian Taliban Lite. But looking at the dynamic; wingers have been working to reverse Roe V Wade for 30 years. All other social concerns have been for the most part thrown overboard in pursuit of that singular goal and related issues. And they're getting screwed.
The meat and potatoes members of the religious right have foregone medical benefits, given up massive tax cuts to the rich while consigning their children to paying for it till the day they die. And while the faithful have been promised the theocratic paradise they're told they crave by the extremist elements in the GOP, oddly about the only thing the Religious Right has been given so far is a pointless Federal restriction on Embryonic Stem Cell Research funding and some fancy, rhetorical lip service. Meanwhile Legislation cutting taxes on billion dollar estates to zero, weakening environmental safety, workers rights, and restricting medical malpractice awards, have sailed through Congress and the White House with the greatest of ease.
As the evil doers now running the country have milked the fiction of Christian persecution in a nation in which most every President, the bulk of the population, and the vast majority of Congress have been overt Catholics and Baptists for two-hundred years, hundreds of billions of dollars have been surreptitiously transferred from the paltry paychecks of Joe and Jane Punchclock to the coffers of Feudal Corporate Masters and the bulging bank accounts of Paris Hilton. As the working class faithful has abrogated job security and their pensions, their heroes have sold them and us to the tender mercies of the Communist Chinese and Enron.
One could almost say the concerns of the Religious Right have been put on the backburner and "Left Behind". You'd think they would figure this shell game out.
It's not all the politician's fault of course; in the same sense a con man cannot be solely blamed for the incredulity of his victim. A lot of these religious folks wouldn't have given a hoot about gun control or tax cuts. But they're whipped up to a fine froth of outrage with effective campaigns of manipulation to throw in with the ruling Aristocracy, by everything from Hillary Clinton's war on video games to Pat Buchanan's worry that Christmas might be canceled by atheists. They've been told Christians are being discriminated against here in the Land of the Free, that Gay People might be married(!), that sex is evil, and that therefore birth control and reproductive choice is the purview of a magic invisible sky wizard. The fly in the ointment, the reality no one has bothered to explain to them or which no longer breaks through the cacophony of unholy drivel they're being fed 24/7, is that their promised political rewards are in many cases so Unconstitutional and unpopular outside of the extremist clique, it's a practical impossibility to render into Law without enormous political fallout to the legislative progenitors.
And to some extant it is their own fault. The fact is folks who accept bizarre scenarios in which the entire Cosmos exists and was created as a Hollywood backdrop for a pissing contest between childish rival deities cooked up by bronze aged goat herders as the One and Only Truth are just begging to be taken advantage of, be it promises of paradise from bin Laden or assurances of Heavenly financial reward from Rev Robert Tilton.
Sleazy Televangelists and dishonest creationists target the faithful precisely because they have tossed their critical thinking skills into the trashcan. Even pastors get in on the fleecing from time-to-time. I've seen it: Shamefully allowing conmen who are in "Search of Noah's Ark" to speak to their congregation and solicit hard-earned, blue-collar dollars ostensibly to go back and get 'proof' that the entire biome of the earth was preserved in the face of a magic flood in a giant boat ... provided the church gets a cut of the loot. Over the years theists have been swindled again and again by smooth talking men of God-eh.
But those shysters are amateur-hour. The real smoke and mirrors show now goes from the evangelical right-wing bloggers all the way up to the most unethical and incompetent White House and Congress since the glory days of Richard Nixon. It's a coordinated, multilayered deception worthy of Oceania. The social conservatives have been expertly led into abandoning the core principles of love, care for the sick, the poor, and the disenfranchised preached by Jesus, in favor of the modern day Pharisees who draw their attention to heaven and homos, bible in one hand while the other picks their pockets and consigns their children into fiscal servitude. In return for loyalty beyond compare to a cabal that has soiled everything they touch, the right has been led down an unemployment line masquerading as the primrose path to Jesus. The promises of a Neo-Christian nation held out before them as if they were a gerbil on a treadmill, always appearing latent, just on the horizon. But just out of reach.
Compared to the antics of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, the religious opportunists colluding in Washington, DC. and across America these days tower in duplicity over those small time operators like Vito Corleone over a teenager running a friendly game of three-card Monty in the Bronx.
It's not a pleasant task to face up to being the victim of a con. Most people understandably would like to avoid admitting to themselves that they were played like a harp. And as the mark is sucked deeper and deeper into the pit of deception there comes a point where they're so emotionally invested in the facade that they simply can't reverse course. From among these committed individuals a scant few are chosen by the likes of Hugh Hewwitt or Jerry Falwell to become part and parcel to the grand enterprise of right-wing propaganda. Just as in so many other tragedies, the victim graduates and is promoted to abuser, facilitator, and perpetrator.
With the country mired in a conflict based on false premises, Abu Ghraib and soon to be released evidence of organized 'detainee' torture, with London, Madrid, Bali, and other cities reeling in the aftermath of terrorist attacks and the flypaper nonsense in ruins, with Osama running free allegedly in a nuclear powered Islamic State which has exported the atom bomb to Iran and North Korea, and now with the President's most trusted advisor caught red-handed lying about his involvement in exposing a CIA operation in Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of 9-11 which took millions in tax payer dollars and years of work to erect, one really has to wonder what it will take for the religious right to wrap their heads around the fact that they, along with the rest of us, have been shortchanged.
And there is no end in sight.