Shall we?
I believe in a higher power and I respect those who do or don’t. As a founding member of The United Church of Bitchitude and Latter Day Drunks (wink), I often ponder the state of the world and why people seem so hell bent on seeing other people suffer. Longtime readers know that I take issue with legislating faith and mixing organized religion with government…but I also find fault in mocking the beliefs of others while demanding respect for one’s own. Tis intellectually lazy and juvenile too...and a key commandment of The United Church of Bitchitude and Latter Day Drunks is “Thou shalt not practice intellectual lazitude.”
In that spirit, I’m about to take issue with Michele Bachmann for her announcement during a campaign stop in Florida.
“Washington, D.C., you’d think by now they’d get the message. An earthquake, a hurricane, are you listening? The American people have done everything they possibly can. Now it’s time for an act of God and we’re getting it.”
Pause…sip coffee…continue.
That shit fails to pass the Spock Test of Logical Logic, damn it!
Bachmann isn’t the only public figure who likes to interpret natural disasters as messages from God...and, like the others, she’s thinking in the now and ignoring the multitude of nature-based drama and trauma that happens during conservative administrations or in conservative states or to conservative man-on-woman sanctified with oily ointment families and so forth and so on.
Beyond that, the Earthquakes Mean God is Pissed faithful are missing the message that rancidity sends to those who have lost everything – God was pissed and you are collateral damage so suck it up or take a long look at your life ‘cause you may have lost your house/wife/dog/son/daughter/business/mementos as punishment for your adoration of porn/feasting on food/using naughty language/getting frustrated with your kids/talking back to your parents/[insert other thing that some have determined is evil while others interpret it as not so bad but disaster prophesies are more that willing to interpret as the reason why the earth shook last week and then Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast hard as a motherfucker].
Oh, who am I kidding…the Bachmanns of the world don’t give a shit about logic.
The Bachmanns of the world hear of a natural disaster and immediately start thinking through the potential political points they can score with their base who get off on that shit and honestly believe that bad things are punishment and good things are a reward and thus…wait for it, ‘cause this is the thought process they apply to everyone struggling with poverty, want, and need…
Cough.
…thus, those who struggle do so because they aren’t godly enough and those who prosper do so because it is the will of God.
Dust off those hands and cease all that volunteer work, donating, and/or activism, folks!
‘Cause the Bachmanns of the world have come up with a guaranteed hustle to absolve themselves of ever having to give a shit or give back or care or mourn or do as humans do when natural disasters hit.
Shit, Michele probably watched the hurricane news with smug ass confidence, tisking and tasking those heathens on the East Coast for whatever they did to earn the wrath of God.
Blink.
10 comments:
If only they took their religion seriously and actually tried to be like Jesus. It would be awesome and powerful to have that much love and caring come into the world. Daily, they miss the opportunity to live religiously and in love. Daily they give themselves permission not to care. Daily they bring forth a wrath. WWJD? This should be their thought. When the idea of WWJD came into the world, I thought this is stupid but as I see how people really live and how they cause so much pain I realize people need to turn their minds to this idea especially those who go around preaching about being Christians and then turning around and doing so much evil.
And this is why Just World Theory, religiously-based or otherwise, is not just a fallacy but a really dangerous one.
She's repeated this comment several times from the looks of the youtube videos. Her audiences always laugh. So does she. She's up to something. There's an ugly part of America out there, and we're seeing it now.
The United Church of Bitchitude and Latter Day Drunks? This is the first time I ever wanted to go to church!!
You Rock!
Yeah, natural disasters happen as punishment because everything revolves around them and what they do, right? That's not the part of this that pissed me off this time, though, because I already expect it of her. What I didn't like was this:
"The American people have done everything they possibly can. "
This tells me more than I ever wanted to know about her opinion of me, you, and all of us. I feel like I'm being looked at as a little game piece in the giant board game between her god and her devil. When in fact, one of the things that the American people got done was the founding of America, and the building of it, mostly from scratch. So might it not be possible that there is a bit more that the American people can do? I'm just sayin'...
-Doug in Oakland
Where was all that "God's wrath" rhetoric after the tornadoes and floods of this spring?
Oh wait, they primarily affected red states (which are now screaming because FEMA isn't bailing them out fast enough...)
She was getting close to straying into Rev. Phred Phelps territory, there. At least nobody (that I know of) has said the storm looked like a giant fetus, like they did with Katrina ...
So God personally makes stormy weather? Sounds like Zeus.
And didn't this this storm cut through Cantor's district...so what was God saying there?
I'm waiting to see which one (Bachman or Perry)performs an exorcism or tries to raise Ronald Reagan from the dead at their next town hall...and Perry better get busy...his direct line to God must be faulty because that storm should have dropped some rain on parched Texas before running off to disembowel the heathens....
In my mind, the most important, and yet most neglected, part of Christianity, comes from the Book of Matthew; helping the poor and unfortunate, easing the suffering of the world among those who have few rights- "the least of my brothers", as Jesus said. In other words, a call to the activism which you do every day, and which I yearn to do. It enrages me to see the right-wing politicians "spin" every social problem we have into a moral one, about which they consequently don't have to give a shit... like drug addicts. They are sick, put them in hospitals to get better, not jails to get worse. Or abortion- if conservatives really wanted to reduce abortions, they'd demand comprehensive sex ed in the schools to teach the proper use of birth control to the young and impressionable (thus preventing unplanned pregnancies, a major source of abortions). BUT NO.. they've gotta get all nutso, and put on their snooty white gloves, and wash their hands of the suffering poor.
Speaking of God... Miss Mahalia Jackson is a Force of Nature.. I am quite sure she could call down a hurricane to rain righteousness upon the wicked.. Sister Girl can sing! She may just get me back into church! In God and Mahalia I trust, all others pay cash. LOL.
-Mark in Madison
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