Morality Calamity
We're going to have two vacancies to fill on the SCOTUS and I hate to channel John Fogerty, but I must: There's a bad moon on the rise. A blood moon that'll shine about the beatings and bashings that'll no doubt transpire between the right and left; between Christians and Fundamentalist moonbats. This is going to test not only America as a nation, but Americans as a people, especially in the morality department.I believe morality is too large of a topic to be pidgeonholed into certain selective political/religious hot-botton issues such as sex, drugs, abortion, and gay marriage exclusively. Just because those topics might be popular theological axes to grind by the Tali-Born Again doesn't mean those issues and the Fundy Fristian Foundation (known as "The FFF" henceforth) of the GOP get to have a fuckin' monopoly on them.
Now, the FFF regularly posits the idea that there is no poverty in the USA. What the fuck is is the criteria they use to make this claim? Usually, the criteria is alot of windbaggery like, "I wents out to da kuntry once an' I gots ta see true poverty an' poverty like I saw in Mexico jes' duddn't exist in 'Merka. Here, the criteria is born from obfuscation in a comparison to other countries. Therefore, I'm left to beleive that the point the FFF is trying to elude to is as long as poverty in American doesn't get as bad as it is in Mexico, then we shouldn't worry about it, shouldn't think about it, and shouldn't do anything about it. And let's say we did just that ... and in within a decade or two, poverty in this country would resemble that of Mexico today. What then? What would the criteria be then? That'll depend on whether or not Mexico is worse 10 years from now. If it is, the wackaloons rightwing fundies of the FFF might point and say, "Hey, least we be better'n than Mexico thar!" If by chance Mexico's poverty is the same or better than Americas poverty, these very same fucktards will just find a different third-world to compare us to and say, "Hey, least we bein' better'n them!"
I find such logic (or lack thereof) rather troubling because it implies that when we're confronted with one aspect of morality (poverty, for example), then it's quite alright for someone in power here to obfuscate and avoid addressing the problem by simply comparing us to another country. However, if a different aspect of our morality is confronted (like the recent rulings on the legality of gay marriage by Canada and Spain), the idea is if someone in power were to point it out and say, "Shee-it! We're behind the times! We should do that, too!", the cantankerous cadre of fundamentalist Christians in this country who'd explode saying, "How dares dat sumbitch takes their orders from the satanic actions of other countries?!?"
In other words, that whole "America-compared-to-{X}" is a rather selective thing where we get to pick and choose our morality from a social buffet of topics or pet-issues and then cobble it together with our own individual political/spiritual/personal beliefs. I remember long ago when engaging in such a thing in this country was considered so myopic and downright hypocritical that the offenders would get ridicules for months as monalogue fodder on late night TV.
Ahhh, but there are times when the Tali-Born Again play this card:
How can you be in poverty if you have a cell phone, cable TV, air conditioning, or a car?
To me, this implies that in order to be considered elegible for the title of "poor" or "living in poverty" (and I don't know of a single soul that would consider it to be a honor), there exists some kind of "official" laundrylist or taboo list among rightwing, welfare-hating, numbskull Fristian Fundies that are dubbed CONTRABAND for a poor person to have at any time whatsoever. It's as if these people upon seeing a poor person with the luxury of a cell phone, cable tv, AC, a car or anything else that a middle class or rich person might have plenty of would just love to walk up to that poor person and say, "Hey! How dare you have these things?!? You're supposed to be poor, remember?!? Poor people aren't allowed to have these things if they're supposed to be poor! Now, give 'em to me, dammit, and start being poor. And if I ever catch with you (*waving cell phone attenae threateningly*) with one of these or anything that you're not supposed to have, I'll come back and take 'em away or make it almost impossible for you to ever get them again! You understand me?!?"
Shocking thing is there's no shortage of people in this country who entertain thoughts like that ... and they don't have to card-carying members of the Dobson Light Brigade! And if they were even given the chance to live this fantasy of taking every luxury a poor person in this country might have, they'd come back the next day and ream the poor person even more by saying shit like, "Oh, you lazy shiftless mooch! Why are you allergic to work?!? Yeah, I know I took your car yesterday. That don't mean you can't go work! Are your legs broke?!? Big deal your job is 25 miles away! You could've walked to walk if you'd just pulled yerself up by ya bootstraps earlier enough to make the trek. Ain't my fault you took a job 25 miles away. Here you lost your job and now you're gonna mooch of my tax-dollars some more, eh? Wha-no! You losing your job ain't my fault, dammit. Taking your car ain't my fault either. Hey, you're supposed to be poor and poor ain't supposed to have goddamned cars. That's why I took it from you. Stop being a leech!!"
I find this rather distressing as hell from a morality standpoint. Why? Apparently, two things never enter into the primodial goop passing for brains in the noggins of your typical rightwing Christian funamentalist. The first thing is Capitalism is never to blame for prices falling to the point where a poor person with the luxury of having "disposable income" at some point (which is probably on the taboo list, too) to afford and thus consume them, thus contributing to the overall economy. The second thing that never enters the equation is that a poor person today may not have have been poor 5 or more years ago. Instead, the person could've been middle class and acquired those possessions then ... at a time when they had the disposble income to do so. Ahhh, but as time elasped, something bad happened in their lot in life (health problems? Got laid off? The market where that person's skills were a commodity suddenly went bust?) - and are now poor people making just enough money to cover their cost of living. Does the fact that they're poor later mean that they have to get rid of those possessions they acquired at a time where they weren't poor in order to fit into the narrow and myopic definition of "poor" among rightwing Fundy-Fristians?!?
If so, then how is it different then if that poor person were to turn the tables around and make-up their own "taboo lists" and concoct their own narrow definitions what is CONTRABAND for a middle class or rich person to have? How is it different if, for example, a poor person took note of all the "toys" a middle-class person has and said, "Bah, you own your own house, drive an SUV, have a nest-egg to fall back on, have this and have that! Middle class hell, boy! You're friggin' Bill Gates! Must be nice, Mr. Rich Boy"?
Why is it that when the poor turns those tables around, the response from the middle and rich class is a defiant scream of, "CLASS WARFARE!!! or one of their "Myth of The Self-Made Person" tangents (e.g. "Listen here, punk! I did it allz by myself with no handouts from anyone unlike your moochin' ass! Yada, yada! Da-dah-da-dah-da!"). In other words, why is it that if the rich and middle class use personal possessions as a barometic wedge to wage class warfare upon the poor, that's fine and A-OK with the wingnuts! The baby Jesus is smiling and cooing. But if the poor were to turn around and do the exact same thing (e.g. use personal possessions as a barometric wedge to wage class warfare on the middle/rich), the baby Jebus starts to wail like a tornado warning siren and the wingnuts are all "How dare you" and all that shit? Why the double-standard? Where has it been written that only the middle and rich in this country have exclusive dibs on the "Class Warfare" card? I find that troubling from a morality standpoint because, quite frankly, there's no evidence anywhere in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the Holy Bible that suggests the idea that people who make more and/or have more are thus granted more privlege to the excercizing of ones freedoms or liberties. Sadly, we see cases where the squeaky wheels of the rich, the famous, and those moronic fuckwad GOP Jebus-cretins are empowered and greased and favortized more so than the citizens in this country who are otherwise not as fortunate. How is that moral from an equality standpoint?
When I made these arguments to one Tali-Born Again wingnut I argued with early yesterday, his response was a defiant:
Ever hear of JUDGE NOT LEST YE BE JUDGED YOURSELF, ASSHOLE?!?!?
I told him, "Fuck yeah, I did" and then proceeeded to tell him that if he and his fellow rightwing Xenophobes-For-Jebus felt that it's the cat's ass to judge liberals Christians such as me by questioning my faith, my morals, and my patriotism because I refuse to crucify my brain for their Dear Leader George W. Hitler Hoover Jr. and refuse to stoop for the Gawd-Sqwad and suck their puny little Fristian dicks until their testicles start whistling "Old Rugged Cross", then by the same Holy Spirit they claim to have, I'm going to turn around and judge them by questioning their incessant love for wars, blood, guts, carnage that the Jesus I know preached against (because living by the sword almost made Peter a second career in ear-collecting), as well as pointing out the totally unchristian riches and possessions of their soothsayers such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc. and finally by calling them out by lovers of money. My exact words to him was what part of "It'll be easier for a camel to enter through an eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God" don't you Republican Christian shitheads not understand?!?"
The Fristian Fundy was LIVID:
STFU, you damned liberal! IT'S NOT ILLEGAL TO LOVE MONEY!!
I responded by saying, "Which master do you serve -- GOD or MAMMON?!?"
The Fristian Fundy said something I will never forget:
"WTF is Mammon?!?!?"
Everything became crystal clear and my greatest fears have come true. The fundamentalist GOP Christians know as much about The Bible they sling around and claim to live by as Donald Rumsfeld knows about basic warfare: JACK DIDDLY FUCKING SHIT!! They don't know anything except for a few favored verses from their agenda-driven self-appointed schysters in their churches whom take them out of their context and mash them together in that 2-speed blender inside their heads. Afterwards, they unscrew their craniums and out pours the devil's poison for rabid indigestion by their pathetic sheeple. It's no wonder why Pat Robertson, Jerry Fallwell, Oral Roberts, Robert Tilton, Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Rod Parsley, Tony Perkins, Charles Stanley and the rest of the "Whose Who" of rightwing Republican Christian Fundamentalism have built themselves a mighty heap of personal loot, drive fully loaded Lexuses and Rolls Royces, and living in luxuriant, miltimillion dollar homes -- they've were blessed not by God but by Ol' Split-Toe himself with the most ignorant, stupid, moronic, idiotic, brainless, defective marks for an audience that Red State America can deliver.
As Dennis DeYoung put it in one of his final Styx songs:
Turns out nobody is perfect,
From A to Z
It's best you follow your heart
Than to ... *heh* ... follow me,
For I'm only a singer playing a song
I've been making it up as I went along
You see, I met a man who told me once
"Sincerity is the key ... and once you learn to fake it
Soon you're gonna be home free!"
Fallen Angel -- Fallen Angel
Well, I guess you were no Angel afterall
Fallen Angel -- Fallen Angel
You always take us with you when you fall...
That sums up Red State, Tali-Born Again America.
A shitload of suckers taken for granted by a shitload of fallen angels.
They deserve it ... but the rest of this country doesn't.
posted by Sizemore at
9:43 PM
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