Red State:The Enemy Within

“You’re already dead sinner. You destroyed your spirit in a waste of shame.”

-Pastor Abin Cooper

“People just do the strangest things when they believe they’re entitled, but they do even stranger things when they just plain believe.”

-Agent Joseph Keenan

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to watch Kevin Smith’s new movie Red State and have to say that is an audacious exercise in film-making unlike anything that I have ever seen before. Smith, more famous for his comedic talents seen in movies like the cult classic Clerks and the religious satire Dogma boldly goes straight for the jugular in this scathing work of truly important social commentary. With America having been flipped fascist, largely through the work of Christian zealots whose gospel bears scant resemblance of the teachings of Jesus Christ far too little serious attention is given to the dangerous and hateful enemy within. The type of venomous, intolerant, anti-intellectual and when it comes down to it just plain anti-American Evangelical Christianity that wants to remake society into a theocratic militarized dictatorship to enforce their brutal vision of utopia on all who are different from them is horrifying and dangerous. This sort of mutated Christianity has metastasized throughout America like a ravenous cancer or in a red state context, an alien strain of kudzu and has played no small part in the destruction of our once functional but now failed political system. Red State does the unthinkable in post 9/11 America by calling a spade a spade regarding the menace of Christian extremism.

The movie is set in an unidentified part of heartland America, likely a state that is solidly Republican where the mundane suburban communities contain the truly monstrous, the good Germans and little Eichmanns of this rotting and adrift empire. Innocuous homes with finely kept lawns similar to where religious fanatic Michele Bachmann’s hero John Wayne Gacy once lived and brutally murdered gay young men all while appearing to be outwardly normal. The movie particularly focuses on the savage homophobia, scapegoating and desire to eradicate gay people from the world looked down upon by a wrathful and merciless God. The plot begins when three horny teenagers named Travis, Jared and Billy Ray surfing the sex sites on the internet via their smart phone set up an arrangement to meet an older woman who has promised to take on all three of them. The boys borrow one of their parents’ car and head off to fictional Cooper’s Dell in search of that nasty sort of sexual debauchery that only a youngster with little maturity and a dick as hard as Chinese arithmetic can truly understand. Making jokes along the way to the encounter about how it’s going to be like fucking their mothers the boys sideswipe a vehicle where the local sheriff, Sheriff Wynan is engaged in sex with another man and flee the scene of the accident.

Travis, Jared and Billy Ray then roll up in front of a trailer where the woman who had solicited the encounter, Sarah Cooper who is played by Melissa Leo (who just won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her tour de force role as the conniving mother in The Fighter) greets them. The boys are offered beer by Sarah who insists that they drink before having sex. As the three get undressed they discover that the beer has been drugged and all pass out. When they awaken they are in a chapel with a handful of worshippers although not sitting in pews, Jared is in a cloth covered cage being carried into the room while the other two are bound in a crawlspace below the pulpit. To his horror they realize that they are captives of the virulently anti-gay, militant pastor Abin Cooper who played by Michael Parks, former star of the 1960s television series Then Came Bronson. Parks performance, loosely based on the notorious Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church is mesmerizing and while due to the subject matter which would scramble hordes of thuggish Christian activists like squadrons of S.A. brownshirts he will sadly not receive the recognition that he is deserving of for this role. Parks is not the hellfire and brimstone type, preaching politics from their taxpayer subsidized den of iniquity churches, he is actually soft-spoken but the demeanor masks a dark fanaticism that is the one most dangerous trait of the true believers, an incandescent inner psychotic fervor.  This is an Oscar winning caliber type of performance by Mr. Parks, a career keystone yet Red State will likely be ignored by the cowardly media and corrupt and morally debased Hollywood kingmakers.

We soon find out that Sarah, the woman who lured the boys into a trap is the pastor’s daughter sitting among the other in the pews. Cooper begins a long sermon on the evils of society and blaming homosexuals who he calls “Satan’s instrument on Earth” in the manner that Evangelical Christian pastors across the land do on a daily basis. The children in the audience are then led from the room by Sarah’s daughter Cheyenne (Kerry Bishé) and the sermon continues. Now it is seen that a man has been bound to a cross on the altar with plastic wrap, a bondage gag-ball like the ones in the basement scene in Pulp Fiction in his mouth to muffle his cries. This is a gay victim previously entrapped in an internet chat room scam who was lured into the clutches of the church similar to the three boys. After more anti-gay demagogy in his soft voice, Cooper gives the order, a gun is produced from inside a bible and the man is executed. His body is dropped into the crawlspace where Travis and Billy Ray have been imprisoned. Jared soon discovers that he is to be the next one on the cross to be denounced and murdered. 

Meanwhile, Sheriff Wynan has dispatched a deputy to find the car that hit him and sits in his office distraught and fondling his pistol while looking at a picture of his wife on his desk. The deputy finds the boys’ parents car with the damage at the Cooper compound. Inside the church Jared and Billy Ray have now managed to cut through their plastic wrap using a protruding broken bone of the dead gay man and are desperately trying to escape with several church members in hot pursuit. Billy Ray pursued by Sarah’s husband Caleb through the narrow basement corridors enters a room and finds it is an arsenal, stocked with various forms of weaponry. The grabs an automatic rifle as Caleb pulls his own gun and they both shoot each other. Abin Cooper has gone to the front gate to meet with deputy Pete who hears the shots and is then himself shot dead by church member Mordecai. Cooper gets on the slain officer’s radio and taunts and threatens Sheriff Wynan with exposing his homosexuality to his wife using pictures that the church has taken. The sheriff then appears ready to put his gun to his head but right before doing so spots a notice from the ATF on the office wall and  puts in a call to bring in the Feds. In a new scene the phone rings at the home of special agent Joseph Keenan, played by John Goodman rousting him from bed that ends up with an order to go to visit the compound. The church had been under investigation for the acquisition of weapons.

Back inside the chapel, Jared is now on the cross while Sarah wails at him over the death of her husband, his body now in front of the congregation as Abin Cooper sermonizes and plays the piano in a service for Caleb. Travis, who played dead when the men of the congregation went to investigate the shooting has grabbed and automatic weapon and makes a break to escape with the male church members in hot pursuit. When Jared emerges from the building into the courtyard he is shot down. The ATF force led by Keenan is now outside of the gates of the compound. The shooter was closeted gay Sheriff Wynan who is pounded upon and dressed down by Keenan for his trigger happy escalation of the situation. Keenan is outraged, having already made reference to the agency’s past history when on the phone with his superior he fully understands the potential for violence. Inside the compound the members arm themselves and prepare to go out in a blaze of glory. Keenan announces through a bullhorn the intent to execute a search warrant on the property and after a brief moment of quiet Cooper appears in an upper window with a hunting rifle and kills an ATF officer with a shot to the head, taunting the heavily armed government men by shouting “come on” after which all hell breaks loose.

Keenan calls to request backup and to inform his superior officers that the situation has escalated into a shoot out. He is asked about media and gives the response that due to the remoteness of the compound that media is not a factor. Keenan is then given the order to storm the complex and kill all within to which he pleads that there are kids inside before asking for something in writing to protect himself and his field office before he agrees to execute the order. In the next scene, Keenan is in a stable when he informs one of his agents that the situation has been “reclassified” and that they are going to “take down this domestic terrorist cell.” As the agent pleads with him for a measured response Keenan reads an email from his cellphone. The email is an official statement:

Our investigation of the Five Points Church in Cooper’s Dell has uncovered an extremely hostile domestic terrorist cell, heavily armed with intentions of bombing a local shopping mall this morning. When we came with arrest warrants they opened fire on us, killing the assistant special agent in charge, giving us no choice but to take the premises with deadly force. In the resulting firefight all suspects were killed. 

The young agent named Harry is distraught and argues with Keenan that there are children inside and that they are going to be the “bad guys” in this situation but is rebuffed coldly. Keenan says “I got eighteen years in, I’m not telling my wife she’s got to clip coupons till we’re dead because I can’t follow a simple order, shitty as that order is…and we’re not talking about Gandhi here”. Harry struggles with the order and then passes it on. As Cheyenne has gone outside to plead with the agents for mercy due to the children an agent produces a throwaway weapon, fires shots and gives it to her, his intent is obviously to gun her down in cold blood as soon as she takes it but while he is distracted and struggling with the girl Sarah walks up behind him and shoots him in the back of the head. Back inside, Cheyenne frees Jared who is bound to the cross and implores him to go with her to the agents to tell the real story, that the terrorist threat was bogus and that they could both stop the slaughter. Sarah finds the two in a room and a struggle ensues where by accident Cheyenne shoots her own mother. Her and Jared then run from the building to confront Keenan imploring him to keep the ATF men from killing the children but she is then shot in the head at point blank range by agent Harry who also guns down Jared. He is just following orders.

Then a bizarre and deafening sound like a roar of a mighty trumpet is heard, the agents are confused but the sound is heard by Pastor Cooper and the remaining live members of the church who have not been killed in the shootout begin to celebrate. They have interpreted the sound as God’s message that the judgement day has come and emerge from the compound unarmed. Cooper sermonizes to the stunned agents about the four angels being loosed and that the Rapture has come. He rants at the “G” men, “G” for godless, “G” for government and advances, taunting Keenan to shoot him. The camera then pans out and the next scene has Keenan in front of his superiors in an inquiry explaining what happened next,  that he subdued the suspect with a head butt and rounded up the remaining church members. The horn of God was revealed to be just a random act by a bunch of hippie pot farmers on a neighboring property who had hooked an ipod up to a fire engine siren in order to fuck with Cooper’s flock who were being harassed by Cooper’s goons by getting their hopes up for the Rapture. He was chastised for disobeying a direct order and then told he’s been promoted. When asking about Cooper’s fate he is fed the whopper that “the U.S. government doesn’t kill people in or out of custody” and that under the Patriot Act that Cooper would be disappeared without trial. The recording device is then turned off and Keenan’s superiors state, quite correctly that “if you kill an American because of a religious belief, you are a terrorist” and that people like Cooper should be locked up under the post 9/11 rules that have eviscerated the Constitution. Keenan then asks why he was given the order to kill the Cooper clan and his boss replies with a smirk “fuck people like this, they’re animals” and that Jesus saves but he isn’t going to save Pastor Cooper from a fuckload of prison rape. The final scene has Cooper in a prison cell sermonizing and singing and one of the fellow prisoners shouts “shut the fuck up”.

Red State is brilliant in it’s commentary, not only for bringing attention the the seriously dangerous form of violent Christianity that has become so prevalent since the 1980’s and the militia types that are drawn to it but also in that it criticizes the heavy handed actions of the government. The “terrorist” attacks of 9/11 and the transformation of the United States into a fascist police state where posse comitatus and habeas corpus have been junked have enabled local police and governments to become militarized. The use of this power, not constrained by any sort of traditional law will become more commonplace as the ongoing economic collapse worsens and as the people take to the streets in protest. The police are already using violence to put down Occupy movement demonstrations that are a real grass roots uprising unlike the phony right-wing Tea Party and if they continue to grow they will represent a threat to the status quo that absolutely will not be tolerated. Serious civil unrest is coming to America very soon, one need only to look at the rest of the world and the growing backlash against vampire capitalism. The ruling class is not going to wait much longer before loosing the government on the protests which will only worsen the situation as the society begins to unravel. The wild card are the Christian fanatics, who truly harbor terrorist intent and are like Pastor Cooper’s clan, armed to the teeth and ready to rumble. They will be used by the establishment as shock troops when the time comes and they will be backed by government thugs as they defend the existing order. Judgment day is getting closer although not in any biblical sense and be assured that there will be blood.

I would strongly recommend Red State to all readers, this is not a movie that is going to be promoted by anything other than word of mouth, heretical that it is to the powerful and those that they depend upon to maintain their blessed order. 

Just my two cents

EE

False Idol Tebow Devoured By Lions

“There may be flies on you and me, but there are no flies on Jesus”

– Hunter S. Thompson

It was so apropos, the Christian being fed to the Lions. Just one week after his media sensationalized glorious appearing when he smited the Miami Dolphins, Tim Tebow was exposed as the fraud that he has always been.  In one of the worst quarterbacking performances in Denver Broncos history the cult of personality that is Tebowmania was shown the true fruits of their blessed savior culminating in a brutal 45-10 beatdown on Orange Sunday. Actually the score is misleading as to how lopsided the ‘game’ was, the resurgent, smack-talking Detroit Lions put it into cruise control mode after running up a 45-3 fourth quarter lead and were putting in their scrubs, it was only that Tebow accumulated the bulk of his stats.  With Tebow fully in charge of the offense the Broncos came out roaring themselves, going right down the field behind two runs that gained 49yards and a great touchdown catch by WR Eric Decker, the only acquisition of the lamentable Josh McDaniels era who seems to have promise as a player . Only the touchdown wasn’t, Decker was jobbed by the refs for being out of bounds and the Broncos settled for a Matt Prater field goal and a 3-0 lead. Then it was Tebow Time!

For the next three quarters Timothy Richard Tebow was more putrid than even a hater like I believed, taking seven sacks, overthrowing receivers and having a fumble and interception returned for scores. The orange clad throng at recently renamed Sports Authority Stadium was quieted as the former Florida Gator was exposed as the untalented wretch that he has been since he joined the NFL. It was the biggest crackup in a Denver stadium since my old teenage friend “Buzz” who was hopelessly shitfaced on Mad Dog 20-20 took a tumble down forty rows of steps and laid vomiting and bleeding in front of a horrified troop of cub scouts and their den mother at old Mile High. So much for all of that happy horsecrap about the vaunted Jon Gruden working with Tebus to change his throwing motion, the guy is the prototypical Florida Gators quarterback which translates into not NFL material. This is going to get even more interesting, having been forced to bow to the demands of the mob of Tebow terrorists to bench the doomstruck failure Kyle Orton it is incumbent upon coach John Fox and grand football poobah John Elway to keep trotting Timmy out there for all to see. Next up, a stop in the raucous den of sin that is the Black Hole in Oakland where the fascist police just shot an Iraq war vet in the head with a gas canister or something during a local #OccupyWallStreet protest… is this a great country or what?  It will likely be another long afternoon for Tebow, especially with the Raiders coming off of a bye after an embarrassing 28-0 home loss to Kansas City looking for blood.

It was always going to be like this for Tebow, the idea that he is a capable NFL starter has been farcical from the get go. Had former Broncos coach McDaniels not been such and easily bamboozled chump who traded up and down in Belichikian fashion in order  to land Tebow in the first round of the draft the boy wonder would have probably still been on the board in the fifth round. It was absolutely imperative for the evangelical Christian fifth column to ensure that he was a first round pick and have a national pulpit for their message of intolerance, hatred and magical thinking for the next decade before launching his political career. A few more weeks of playing like he did on Sunday and the fucker won’t be able to be elected as dogcatcher and the Christers could for once do like Jesus and give those orange #15 jerseys to the poor. Were Tebow a typical former college quarterback without a public relations and media colossus behind him he would probably be starting in the NFL as an h-back or converted tight end, hell he would be far and away the best running back on the Broncos roster right now were he to be a team player and surrender the quarterback wet dream. Too bad that there has been so much invested in the kid by a national movement that is  hellbent on overthrowing the country within and implementing a theocratic form of government more in line with the diseased ravings of Rousas John Rushdoony than the thoughtful ideas of Thomas Jefferson.

Back to the game, it was as heinous a debacle as last year’s 59-14 bludgeoning by the Raiders that punched McDaniels ticket out of town if not even worse, there was actually some sort of bizarre false hope here, kind of like before the Nazis rolled into the Warsaw Ghetto and showed that it was hopeless from the onset. Here in America though the morons like their false reality served sunny side up with a heaping dish of sugar coated bullshit on the side. The cult of personality and the feckless and complicit media were swooning over Timothy Richard Tebow after his “miracle” comeback against the pathetic Dolphins last week. Tebow was the toast of the nation, the next great quarterback and a messianic figure just four short days ago. The networks built their entire weekly narrative on the great Tebow and the NFL itself, no stranger to shameless marketing promotions, notable the pink shoes to pander to the female demographic during breast cancer awareness month and the flag-sucking tributes to the American Reichstag Fire 9/11, even hyped the Broncos v. Lions game as a biblical battle of good (Tebow) vs. evil (fearsome Detroit defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh). Everyone was in for this one, all in… especially Tebow himself who showed all in attendance and a large television audience what any serious football fan already knew, that he has no future whatsoever as a real live pro football quarterback.

Between the errant throws and three and outs Tebow was hit and sacked by the new bad boys of Motown in their silver and Honolulu blue without remorse. Some of the Lions even dared to engage in the new fad of “Tebowing” after their sacks of Orange Jesus. Of course the Christers, the perpetual victims that they are and keep their flocks of fucking ignoramuses fired up by playing immediately screamed sacrilege that the Lions were mocking Christianity itself. Not that the evangelical zealots need any help with that one, they have dragged the teachings of Jesus Christ through an overflowing with shit sewer of anger, bigotry, war worship and anti-gay demagoguery as they have revised their religion to the point where Christ is the one ousted from the temple by the moneychangers. They wailed and gnashed their teeth over the Lions on field antics but have zero problem when gays are beaten in hate crimes egged on by their blasphemous perversions of Christ’s message. Hell, were Jesus to return to the USA Today preaching the same message he would either be crucified anew or be just another Middle Eastern man locked in a small cage at Gitmo or at another of our secret torture sites.  Tebowing became a national craze after numero 15 kneeled in prayer after Miami’s implosion led to an improbable overtime win, a thoroughly tasteless religious display at a goddammed football game. I mean come on, do you think that a Muslim quarterback would be afforded the deference paid to Tebow were he to pray on the sideline? This is the new America/Homeland and there would be catcalls and wails for a halftime beheading at the fifty yard line were that to ever occur. Homeland Security would probably be parachuted into the stadium to haul him off and be disappeared into our gulag system.

After what I personally rank as one of the best plays in Broncos history, a 100 yard pick six by Detroit’s Chris Houston, great because it may spare the team from a lost decade under Tebow,  the Lions defender commented:

“We just wanted to make him be a quarterback,” said Houston, who revealed the defensive game plan was based on the Lions’ steadfast belief that Tebow was incapable of moving the Broncos to a score by completing six consecutive passes in any drive. “We had somebody take away his legs and made him use his arm.”

And so they did. And so the latest big lie of the corporate media was shorn like a sheep. The broadcast of the game was vomit inducing. Former star safety John Lynch spent the broadcast making excuses and seemed to have been sniffing one of Tebow’s used jockstraps in the booth. Lynch repeatedly blamed Broncos coaches for not changing the offense to fit Tebow, fuck the rest of the team right? One article referenced that Tebow’s name was mentioned an incredible 140 times during the broadcast. It didn’t take long for the right-wing swine in the media to pick up the meme that coach John Fox intentionally sabotaged Tebow, of course this giant turd emerged from Rupert Murdoch’s terrorist broadcasting organization – surprise, surprise. What’s next, Bill O’Reilly denouncing John Fox as a secret Muslim agent determined to implement Sharia Law? The wound is still fresh but already there are rumblings that the myth of Tebow as miracle working man of God is under siege and mercifully may be taken down. From – Opponent: Tebow experiment is‘embarrassing’:

“Can you believe ’15’?” one Detroit Lions defender asked after his team’s 45-10 immolation of Tebow and the Denver Broncos. “Come on – that’s embarrassing. I mean, it’s a joke. We knew all week that if we brought any kind of defensive pressure, he couldn’t do anything. In the second half it got boring out there. We were like, ‘Come on – that’s your quarterback? Seriously?’ ”

It would be one thing if this particular defender could be written off as an outlier, but during the time I spent in the Lions’ locker room after the game – and, later, on the phone with various coaches, front-office executives and players around the league – similarly harsh assessments were uttered about the second-year quarterback making his second start of the 2011 season.

Words like atrocious, terrible, completely exposed and not even close to ready kept coming up in these conversations; a couple of Lions even used the term oh my god. They did not appear to be mocking Tebow’s devout Christian beliefs – however, at least two Detroit players (middle linebacker Stephen Tulloch and tight end Tony Scheffler) made a point of “Tebowing” during the game, imitating the prayerful pose the quarterback struck following the previous Sunday’s stunning overtime victory over the Miami Dolphins.

The point that was driven home on Sunday, and quite forcefully, was this: Against a crappy team like the winless Dolphins, the possibility exists that Tebow can get away with 55 minutes of flaccid football and, with the help of a blessed onside-kick recovery, add to the legend forged at Florida, where he had one of the most decorated college football careers of all time. However, against an emerging power like the Lions (6-2), he’s as overmatched and vulnerable as an adolescent’s eardrums in the front row of a Nickelback concert.

“As long as he felt our pressure,” said Lions defensive end Cliff Avril, whose third-quarter sack/fumble/recovery/return produced one of Detroit’s two defensive scores, “he was gonna make crazy decisions.”

In fairness, Tebow’s 18-for-39, 172-yard performance – numbers padded considerably by garbage-time completions, if you can believe that – wasn’t solely the product of dubious choices. His limited skill set was also on display, from an acute lack of accuracy, to a deliberate delivery (Avril dislodged the ball while Tebow was extending his arm backward before attempting to pass), to an apparent uncertainty about where to go with the ball.

– – –

None of this was necessarily a surprise to the Broncos’ brass, including coach John Fox and executive vice president of football operations John Elway. Tebow’s flaws were obvious to all trained observers during training camp, which is why veteran Kyle Orton was named the team’s unquestioned starter in August.

Orton’s struggles – and Denver (2-5) losing four of its first five games – caused the Broncos’ decision-makers to call an audible, a move greeted by great popular acclaim. Yet it’s hard to imagine that Elway, one of the greatest quarterbacks in football history, saw anything he didn’t expect on Sunday. It was as if, by starting Tebow, he said to the 74,977 fans at Mile High, “You wanted this guy? OK, then … Heeeerrrree’s Timmy!”

In other words – you wanted it? Now eat it you motherfuckers!!! Eat it until the scales are ripped away from your eyes and you are burning your number fifteen jerseys in the parking lot like Bears fans did when former Bronco quarterback Jay Cutler pulled up lame in last year’s NFC Championship and let his team down. A sad fact of life is that reality sucks, not that any of you Tebow suckling Christers have any idea of what reality actually is in your jacked up on Jesus parallel universe.