Fetus Wars

An ugly intramural skirmish has broken out amongst the professional haters of the extremist ‘Christian’ right. The reactionary elements that have held sway over the blistering agenda of bigotry and hatred through the manipulation of phony moral issues like gay marriage and abortion are apoplectic that they are losing members of the flock to those who preach more rational, more traditional Christian values rather than the apostasy of the generations of strip mall and mega church fundies weaned on the ultra-violent Left Behind pulp fiction novels of Timothy LaHaye and their apocalyptic dementia that has transformed Jesus Christ into some sort of malevolent avenger intent at returning to earth to murder millions for the glory of the Rapture pimps.

Now for the first time being challenged in the ideological arena by Christians with true humanitarian values more in line with the prince of peace rather than the god of war the hucksters, hate mongers and goats among sheep are striking out. The usual fifth columnist, anti-American activist suspects including James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, Donald Wildmon and Paul Weyrich recenty blasted National Association of Evangelicals director Rev. Richard Cizik in a letter reeking of brimstone for daring to suggest that taking a stand against global warming as a moral issue that –GASP – was destroying God’s earth.

The American mullahs called for Cizik’s head on a platter for daring to deviate from the more politically successful homosexual witch hunts and that wonderful 3 card monte scam that is the Orwellian named pro-life movement. God forbid that the hidden agenda of the well connected right-wing lynch mob’s true agenda is exposed which is evident by Tony Perkins’ comments: We’re saying what is being done here,” Mr. Perkins said, “is a concerted effort to shift the focus of evangelical Christians to these issues that draw warm and fuzzies from liberal crusaders.” Hitler hated liberals too, and in taking a look back at history homosexuals were only an appetizer for the Third Reich’s voracious appetite for human suffering…but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The entire abortion farce is as essential a lure to victims as is candy to a schoolyard pedophile when it comes to the snake oil salesmen of the Religious Right. The animosity that fuels the movement is largely fueled by a highly organized, well-funded activist machine that uses the power of the so-called pro life crusade to tap into the inner anger of the economically disenfranchised who have been victimized by the ravages of years of Reaganaut greedheads conducting a take no prisoners looting spree and a savage war on the middle and lower classes.

This raw anger is then harnessed by opportunistic, power mad televangelists and assorted other shamans and is channeled into a vicious backlash against the perceived evils of liberalism and world that they blame for all of their misfortune and the demonizing of women’s rights that is represented by Roe V. Wade is an opportune and fat target. For abortion is a super charged emotional issue that can be cloaked in Manichean terms by propagandists and right-wing wordsmiths and it is especially successful in pandering to those who are the most ignorant and has spread like mutant kudzu through the red states in peckerwood nation.

Thomas Frank’s excellent book What’s The Matter With Kansas takes a hard look at the 1990’s rise of religious extremism on the basis of using abortion as a war cry against modern progressive society. Frank analyzes the nation’s hard rightward lurch by looking at that most mythical bastion of Americana that is the state of Kansas. Hell, what could be more reminiscent of the baseball, hotdogs, mom and apple pie version of that great white picket fence land of yore, Oz and Bob Dole than the crappy Midwestern state that has long been the most agonizing place that motorists have had to drive through to get to someplace else. Militant anti-reproductive rights vampire Randall Terry and Operation Rescue had made similar connections between Kansas and the American psyche and descended like a plague of locusts on Wichita for massive rallies and civil disobedience during the so-called ‘Summer of Mercy’ back in 1991 that was Mecca for the rubber fetus crowd – Pat Robertson, James Dobson and others gave fire and brimstone speechs at a Nuremberg style rally in Cessna Stadium (home of the Wichita State Shockers) to a fired up mob of culture warriors. Any resemblance between the huge rally and footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph Of The Will is purely coincidental.

As is evident from Newton McPherson Gingrich’s latching onto the Religous Right’s agenda like a barnacle on the bottom of a garbage scow it is a must for every neo-fascist political prick with a disdain for constitutional democracy and delusions of grandeur to curry favor with the American Taliban. Aspiring nominee and shameless phony Mitt Romney has been spending a fortune sucking up to the anti-democratic tendencies of the Religious Right extremists and Jerry Falwell is going to have to undergo surgery to remove Manchurian McCain’s nose from where it has been permanently imbedded between the fleshy cheeks of his big fat ass.

Then there is the savage anti-gay onslaught that is encouraged at every step by demagogues who won’t be happy until they incite pogroms and the streets are running red with blood. This has proven to be a big winner as a red meat issue to the pathetic losers looking for scapegoats for their own failed lives and has irresistible allure to the Republican party apratchik as well as their God squad Gauleiters. Even nice guy NFL Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy’s luminous halo is being drawn over to the dark side and coming to resemble the light of the fires of hatred and intolerance rather than the beacon of Christlike compassion that the media would have you believe. The first black coach to win a Super Bowl is essentially spitting on the hard fought sacrifices by Civil Rights activists who rebelled against bigotry and won by making an appearance in front of a militant anti-gay group with an affiliation to Christian jihadist James Dobson’s Focus On Family. Maybe he and Ann Coulter can lead the choir in an inspiring rendition of Burn the Faggots at The Stake!

When defending Dungy’s visit to the temple of hate with a lame press release “Coach Dungy’s feelings on the importance of marriage and family are well known” the Colts themselves are as guilty of hypocrisy and endorsing these theocratic fascist groups through their lack of action. If there is a time when the NFL could and should make a serious example that they condemn discrimination of all sort then Dungy and the Colts should be slapped with a serious penalty – imagine the uproar if a white coach made a guest appearance at a Ku Klux Klan or similar white supremacist gathering.

I never did get a good handle on all of this cloaking of raw bigotry, vicious scapegoating and dehumanization in the language of “pro-family” and “pro-marriage”. If the Religious Right really gave a rat’s ass about family they would not be serving as brownshirts for a rapacious monopoly capitalist system that leaves families in disarray and children hungry, uninsured and entrapped in a desperation that will last a lifetime. Increasing poverty and hopelessness it seems is the desired result of the theocratic fascist movement which as Chris Hedges put it in his great American Fascists: The Christian Right And The War On America is necessary to create a “culture of despair” that makes recruitment to this most anti-democratic of movements much easier for the reptillian Elmer Gantry style preachers looking to build the strength of their local bunds.

The pro-marriage angle is just more of the same horseshit, economic problems are among the top contributors to stress on relationships and the Calvinistic attitude towards piling up Earthly rewards as a show of God’s favoritism is anathema to Christ’s work to minister to the poor, the sick and the downtrodden. When was the last time that Jerry Falwell or any of the maggots in the mix ever even pretended to give a tin shit about the plight of America’s homeless?

There is also nothing about divorce in the gospels of the hate mongers, it would seem to me that any movement that is truly interested in propping up the institution of marriage would look into strengthening the bonds of matrimony by offering financial counseling, community outreach and sermons and lessons accentuating the positive virtues of building a strong family structure by emphasizing the sacred vows. Of course such a focus would strongly condemn adultery, the practice of which the last time that I looked was actually one of the motherfucking Ten Commandments! This would of course be inconvenient for the serial philanderers amongst the flock including the politicians and the mega-church ringmasters. Hell, maybe a bit more focus on propping up the family rather than knee jerk phantom issues could even prevented a fine Christian man like Pastor Ted Haggard from wandering northward in search of anal sex and crystal meth.

The ugly truth is that the entire pro-family/marriage movement is as big a fraud as the culture of life that cares so much for it that it condones and does so with smugness and self-righteous glee at the wanton slaughter of brown skinned, Muslim children on the front lines of the battle of Armageddon. Save the fetus, slay the child – double bonus points said child happens to be incinerated in a blaze of napalm or white phosphorous.

It’s all nothing more of the same standard slick marketing, chicanery and fraud that has been so perfected by McCarthyist Republican trolls over the past half-century or so. It is all about power, and it is all about hate and anybody who dares to tell you anything else is pissing on your leg and telling you that it’s raining. In American Fascists Hedges often refers to his mentor Dr. James Luther Adams who had witnessed first hand the rise of the Nazis while in Germany in the 1930’s:

Adams, finally, told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. The Nazis had used “values” to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations. He ordered raids on places where homosexuals gathered, culminating in the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin and the permanent exile of its director, Magnus Hirschfield. Thousands of volumes from the institute’s library were tossed into a bonfire. The stripping of gay and lesbian Germans of their civil rights was largely cheered by the German churches. But this campaign legitimized tactics, outside the law that would soon be employed against others. Adams said that homosexuals would be the first “social deviants” singled out and disempowered by the Christian Right. We would be the next.

 I have always strongly suspected that George W. Bush was not really the one to be afraid of, that he was only a willing dupe who would allow the constitution to be gutted, torture to be codified, a police state infrastructure put into place and the ground sown for a true tyranny as vile and destructive as any since Hitler’s Reich.

This much has happened already and the kingmakers are still conducting auditions for the chosen one who will be the future Führer of the Fetus Wars and finish the job of swapping out the Constitution for the Malleus Maleficarum.

By Ed Encho

Hateful Lemmings

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

-Sinclair Lewis

On Monday, the 35th anniversary of Roe V. Wade, George W. Bush played to the rubber fetus crowd with his annual phone call to anti-reproductive rights activists. Pandering to the so-called pro lifers who are all that remain of the red plague that has swept America is vintage Rove, especially on the day prior to the State of the Union Address. The hateful lemmings awaiting Rapture can always be counted on to maintain steadfast and unwavering in support of their exalted king’s holy crusade to call forth a rain of fire from the skies over Tehran. There are increasingly ominous signs that an attack on Iran is imminent with the incessant barrage of MSM propaganda proclaiming that Bush’s evil twin Ahmadinejad wants to wipe out God’s chosen state of Israel and the yahoos are anxious to Armageddon it. The cult of the glorious reappearing has now consummated it’s unholy union with the ivory tower dwelling ideologues at the American Enterprise Institute and the doomsday clock is moving closer to midnight.

That Le Enfant Terrible finds it necessary at this juncture to continue to cater to the whims of the extremist Christian Right speaks volumes as to the disproportionate amount of influence that the lunatic fringe holds over American policy. The support of dead enders praying feverishly for apocalypse and worldwide human suffering brought on by war, plagues, pestilence and environmental disasters somehow has become a much sought after precious thing. A thing that should instead bring forth a scarlet letter of shame that any advanced society would justifiably use to marginalize it. Radical clerics like Falwell and Dobson and their ilk are deferred to and treated as king makers for any potential Republican candidate and doddering old Senator McCain has puckered up to kiss Dobson and Falwell’s rings and pampered fat asses with an alarming frequency. Why these reactionary zealots are given any credibility at all is a travesty and we will all eventually be the ones who reap the whirlwind. The extremist elements of the Christian Right need to be stigmatized and isolated as the cancer on free society that they truly are and not embraced by charlatan politicians pandering for votes. It only serves to further empower the menace to democracy that is represented by the ravenous wolves lurking amongst the sheep.

Having just finished the new book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America I am compelled to recommend this very informative and alarming examination of the dangerous influence of the extreme Christian Right. Hedges is a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the author of another book that should be required reading for all advocates of armed conflicts War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Hedges shines a light on the parasitical false prophets who prey on the weak, the failed and the confused in order to lure them into the flock and turn them into foot soldiers in a political army. He correctly points out that the fundamentalist theocratic movement is driven by economic despair, exurban loneliness, despair and frustration at a world in which they have failed utterly and which they are all too willing to turn on for revenge once recruited. His unrelentingly frank examination of the Christian Right is as comprehensive and damning an indictment of the perversion of religion for the acquisition of political power that I have yet to come across:

In this version of the Christian Gospel, the exploitation and abuse of other human beings is a good. Homosexuality is an evil. And this global, heartless system of economic rationalization has morphed in the rhetoric of the Christian Right into a test of faith. The ideology it espouses is a radical evil, an ideology of death, it calls for wanton destruction, destruction of human beings, of the environment, of communities and neighborhoods, of labor unions, of a free press, of Iraqis, Palestinians or others in the Middle East who would deny us oil fields and hegemony, of federal regulatory agencies, social welfare programs, public education – in short, the destruction of all people and programs that stand in the way of a Christian America and its God-given right to dominate the rest of the planet.

American Fascists also addresses the necessity for a male dominance based hierarchical order for in the world of the extreme Christian Right a woman’s place is to act as chattel. Women are to perform their duty as deferential baby machines and to never challenge the authoritarian king of the castle. The war on science and the replacement of history with magic is examined in a look at the bizarre new Petersburg, Kentucky Creation Museum where dinosaurs coexist with humans. All animals were created on the sixth day and that would include a vegetarian T-Rex that was only turned into a ravenous carnivore after the garden was defiled by original sin. The reality of global warming is vehemently denied and Darwin is reduced to a pejorative. The construction of the alternate reality that Hannah Arendt identified as a precursor of totalitarianism is essential: 

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

Much to his credit, Hedges does not allow himself to be constrained by the impoliteness of political correctness – a concept that the right has used so effectively in manufacturing animosity. Liberals have a tendency to be overly sensitive when it comes to dealing with zealots and reactionary freaks and the Religious Right benefits immensely from the refusal to engage it on a level playing field. This unwillingness to call this movement out for what they are – fascists with an innate loathing for democracy only allows it to grow stronger and more organized. Hedges writes:

Most liberals, the movement has figured out, will stand complacently to be sheared like sheep, attempting to open dialogues and reaching out to those who spit venom in their faces.… Debate with the radical Christian Right is useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It is a movement based on emotion and cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday school. Naïve attempts to reach out to the movement, to assure them that we too, are Christian or we, too, care about moral values are doomed. This movement is bent on our destruction. The attempts by many liberals to make peace would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. These dominionists hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution, a world they blame for the debacle of their lives. They have one goal – it’s destruction.

Taboo analogies are made to certain 20th Century European regimes and the fervor and certitude that drove mass movements to create totalitarian fascist states. The references are not gratuitous and are backed up by historical statements regarding the religious institutions in those states and their failure to act morally in denouncing the hatemongering demagogues before the societies collapsed upon themselves. In some instances the churches actually encouraged it much like in early 21st century America where the attacks on homosexuals and other elements deemed undesirable are both sanctioned as well as a holy war against people of an entire religion. An earlier essay by Mr. Hedges forms the basis for his book and is essential reading for those lacking time but interested in getting the message.

When not attacking the rights of women and gays, the educational system, liberalism, science and the democracy that they so despise, the American fascists relish every opportunity to shriek for the blood of Muslims. They regularly denounce the Islamic faith as Satanic among other pejoratives. A war of civilizations is what they desire, a redux of The Crusades and with any luck at all it will even bring about Armageddon! The Islamic fundamentalists that the theocratic demagogues rail about should be familiar to them because they in fact possess many of the same traits as is pointed out by Davidson Loehr in The Fundamentalist Agenda.

The Christ of the theocratic fundamentalists is an angry one, his is a kingdom based on fear and control. The world of the Jesus as terminator is a hateful and a vitriolic one that has no compassion, no tolerance for peace and an insatiable bloodlust for those deemed by the movement to be enemies. Their version of Christ has only contempt for the poor, the sick and the downtrodden and nowhere in it are the meek blessed. The fundamentalist twisting of the gospels to show that the acquisition of wealth is somehow a sign of divine blessing is blasphemous and if there is such a place as Hell may the radical clerics who preach this filth one day burn there. There are reinterpretations of scripture and a strange worship of the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments despite their implicit warning about false idols and graven images.

I personally caught on to the hypocrisy of the Religious Right early in life when my parents would send myself and my younger sister off to the friendly neighborhood Baptist church for Sunday school in order to get us out of the house. The fundamentalist fire and brimstone preaching Baptists would even send a nice gaily painted school bus around the neighborhood trolling for youthful prospects.

I remember that in addition to prayer a plenty we used to engage in sing-a-longs on that bus and one of the verses of the songs that I will always remember went something like this: “You can’t get to heaven with hippie hair cause the lord don’t like that mess up there”

My young little mind must have already contained the seeds of skepticism because lo and behold while our Sunday school teacher was leading us in song I noticed that he was standing in front of a picture of some dude with really long hair and a scraggly beard…and it sure as fuck wasn’t Ted Nugent.