Billy Clyde was up in the hilly woods, working on his corn experiment, when he noted a bear about as close as his shotgun. He reached the weapon, drew back the hammers, and heard a resounding click when he pulled the triggers. Old Billy then quite naturally raised up his eyes to the heavens.
"Lord, I know I ain't been to Sunday School in a 'coon's age, but I'll just betcha this here bear ain't never been!"
Billy Clyde had a point.
Imagine a football coach who has designed and installed what he considers to be the perfect game plan, whereupon come Friday night his team muffs it. They perform at about 70% of his expectations. And so he quite naturally turns his playbook over to the opposition, and the home town boys are trounced. The coach figures to punish those who gave 70% for him in favor of those 100% opposed.
This is the logical catch for many televangelists, assorted Baptists, and bin Laden himself. Fanatics have a logic problem, for the sun shineth and it raineth on the wicked and the righteous in equal measure. That flood sent to punish sodomites which make up 1% of the population must engulf the holy Christian majority. They cannot give up their creed, so the holies proclaim, the reason we are stuck in this woeful pit is insufficient digging!
And so Yanewah throws over his tribe of Israelis for slighting the message in any slight detail (You want kings? I'll show you kings!) in full support of those who do not believe in Him at all. This is a standard problem in translating the random events of nature for Sunday morning service.
Hitler and the Nazis came to power blaming the Jews for "stabbing us in the back" by quitting on the first world war back in Berlin with victory in sight for the Fatherland in the trenches. The Repubs tried to blame Roosevelt for giving up the east to the godless commies, although at Potsdam there was something bigger on the plate than Czechoslovakia, just as they figured in 1938. And we hear about how the Vietnam war would've been won for us had not all those Democrats sheered off and quit.
And, according to a Rasmussen Poll, a plurality of Repubs think their party has grown too moderate in the last eight years, and 55% of them think it should be more like Simple Sarah. I agree on both counts, and earnestly hope they take vigorous steps to become what they behold as their destiny.