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

Tebow Agonistes & Palin’s Taste for the Dark Meat

Denver Ravaged By Tebola Virus

The national holy war, the cultural crusade and the right-wing fascist cancer that has fed on this country for decades, flying under the radar has poked up it’s ugly, devil-horned head in Denver. The ongoing crusade to bully the NFL’s Broncos into making the Manchurian Candidate that is Tim Tebow the staring quarterback is as evil as it gets from our domestic terrorist Christian jihadists. Of course Tebow can’t accurately throw the ball but hey, he is a nice kid, loves Jesus, has a best-selling book and once appeared in an anti-abortion Super Bowl commercial sponsored by the venomous, just downright un-American gay hating organization headquartered in Colorado Springs that is Focus On The Family. Radical cleric Jame Dobson’s hate group has much to do with the Denver demagoguery.

In an update on a previous post of mine, The Great Tebow Crusade: A Sports Metaphor for a Delusional Nation that was done prior to the opening kickoff I thought that it would be interesting to drop in on my old hometown once again. The entire sordid Tim Tebow affair is typical of the bullying and harassment of the American fascist political movement that is manifested in the Religious Right. What is going on in Denver right now is a rare opportunity for this sort of pernicious behavior to cross over into the mainstream for all to see. It is very similar to the Bristol Palin Dancing With The Stars shenanigans when the teabaggers/religious zealots nearly blew up ABC’s cash cow with their activism. Sad that in America that unless something happens to be disruptive to pro football or silly reality television it doesn’t get noticed, such is life in a sad land where celebrity is the coin of the realm and being butt-fuck stupid has risen to the level of dogma in one of the two major political parties.

While I largely passed for the most part on the NFL’s opening week 9/11 nationally televised carnivals of perversion I have as a longtime Broncos fan been watching the Tebow sideshow closely. With little boy Jesus relegated to the third string due to his inferior professional football skills (hell, if you can’t beat out Brady Quinn you have problems) the fervor of the cult has raged unabated. During the season opener in the recently renamed Sports Authority Field in Denver the home team laid a whopper of an egg against the hated Oakland Raiders, this being at least the third straight home loss to Al Davis’ team. Incumbent starter Kyle Orton once again couldn’t make a play down the stretch or in the red zone to save his life and during one drive had one of the most idiotic fumbles that I have seen in 45 years of watching football – he just dropped the fucking ball! The final score was only 23-20 this time, a huge improvement on last year’s 59-14 battering or the prior years ultimate humiliation on having Jamarcus Russell lead a team from behind but it was still a winnable game. The Tebow contingent, and naturally the pocket media that promotes the imbecility that he is a quality starting QB in the NFL. By the fourth quarter, when a homefield advantage led by a 80,000 fans making noise was for the most part erased by Tebow fans braying for their boy and booing Orton’s every move the deal was done and the season started out with the loss. I remember when the old Mile High Stadium was one of the most hated and feared venues in the league to play in. Opponents were intimidated by the din of Broncos (not Tebow) fans all cheering their team, making noise to discombobulate the opposition and stomping their feet on the old steel stands to rock the place as if it were in an earthquake. Not so anymore, as long as the Christers show up to try to cram their religious avatar and their political agenda down everyone’s throats the home field edge for a Denver team desperately in need of any help that they can get while rebuilding will be negated.

Disney Corporation’s Sportscenter on ESPN led off their Tuesday NFL coverage with one of their standard dim-witted, big-titted pretty girls spinning the Broncos v. Raiders game into an epic illusion that completely ignored the game, focused entirely on Orton’s fumble and then cut to shots of Aryan youth looking Tebow fans decked out in their orange number 15 jerseys chanting TEEEEE-BOWW juxtaposed with shots of Orton’s deer in the headlights look. More dishonest and out of context reporting by a network that had long ago jumped the shark and exists solely off of it’s past before it was devoured by Disney. I will grant the Tebowistas one thing, Orton does suck and more often than not exhibits all of the grace of a stork that is high on quaaludes while in the pocket. He can’t run, has to deal with a porous offensive line, has no running game to support him and the next clutch play that he makes will be the first yet he must feel like the Christers of old when they were trotted out by the Romans to be eaten by lions. In my opinion while overly sadistic and very gory it is a practice that deserves another look given the increasing militancy of American Christendom today.

But on and on it goes, the next big thing is that an out of state group is going to be spending money to put up two pro-Tebow billboards in Denver, taking their experience from the ruinous and ongoing culture war into the sports arena. These swine are pros when it comes to distraction, deceit and divisiveness and I can guarantee you that it won’t stop with the billboards. I am sure that Jesus would cough up the 10 k, it’s not like there are poor and starving children in Denver who could be better helped where the money donated to an organization that ministers to their needs. In a way though the team has nobody to blame but themselves for the Tebow thing, after all, ousted coach Josh McDaniels was given free reign over personnel decisions and he was duped into trading up and down to get Timmy to begin with. They also were completely happy to feature  those expensive number 15 jerseys that are made in other countries by sweatshop labor (really patriotic NFL merchandise) and promoted Tebow heavily in their marketing campaign for season ticket renewals despite the lockout. Pat Bowlen if nothing else is a shrewd businessman who understood that despite the season in limbo due to the lockout that the Jesus juicers being the suckers, rubes and schmucks that they are and always have been could be counted on to shell out their money for the second coming of Christ.

As it sits today, mid-week after Sunday’s latest game Tebow actually got onto the field against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, which had thousands of his flock roaring their approval. But in a cruel crushing of their hopes and dreams numero 15 was only in the game as an emergency receiver, the Broncos had lost two more pass catchers to injury and needed a decoy. Tebow didn’t catch a pass nor was he targeted by the maligned Orton, I am sure that this week the Tebow cult will be crying that it was a devious trick by hated infidel coach John Fox who may soon find himself the target of one of those trademark right-wing whisper campaigns about his alleged fondness for Sharia law. The Broncos mercifully hit the road this week after eking out a 24-22 win, it will be a welcome departure from the ongoing distraction of the Tebow cancer.

Stay tuned for further developments in this ongoing saga.

“I know that white woman want some black dick”

When it comes to the Republican dogma of butt-fuck stupid there is no better face for the anti-intellectual movement that is America’s Khmer Rouge than Sarah Palin. The wild Alaskan moonbat is a modern day fable of white trash hitting it big in a way that the Clampett’s never could have imagined. Palin rocketed to national media stardom when she was selected in an amazing act of desperation by former presidential candidate and longtime blowhard John McCain as his vice presidential running mate during the 2008 campaign. Palin, a sly little Kewpie doll with Nixonian delusions of grandeur was a perfect head of the nascent know-nothing Tea Party Astroturf movement. She traveled the land saying the things that McCain just couldn’t or wouldn’t say about the BLACK man running on the Democratic party ticket. Palin’s rallies attracted the real dregs of society, the uber-bigoted religious rabble who sure as fuck weren’t about to tolerate a Negro in the WHITE House. Of course Palin began to get under the notoriously sensitive McCain’s skin and in an amazing act of raw hubris sought to give a concession speech/call to arms when Obama’s electoral landslide swept aside the “maverick” once and for all.

Palin had staying power though, the suckling corporate media, always looking for a cheap story that appealed to the morons and living off of the government dole shut ins and rarely a news cycle went by without some sort of Palin update. She parlayed her fame with the peckerwoods and knuckle-draggers into a reality show, book deals and speaking engagements, quitting her real gig as Alaska’s governor to chase the money. She even starred in a bizarre movie version of her kampf unbelievably called “The Undefeated” which was even less popular than the idiotic adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that was launched earlier this year.  While suffering a huge ding in her image largely due to the sleazy insinuations of violence and killin’ that was a feature of her ongoing campaigns and accumulation of dough with the tragic attempted murder of Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords – the asshats in Palin’s org. had featured a nifty map with a gunsite on top of Giffords’ district she actually dropped off of the media screen – temporarily of course. She was soon back on a heavily hyped bus tour just in time for Memorial Day where in true Republican fashion she could hijack the day from the war dead for her own political agenda like the greedy, disrespectful narcissist that she is.

Palin being the divisive figure and insatiable media whore that she is would naturally compile a long list of enemies, a good many in the GOP establishment who likely resented having to kiss her ass for two plus years. Palin also has a past and the dirty little secrets are starting to seep out. This spring saw a book launched by a former ally named Frank Bailey entitled Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin which portrayed Palin as vindictive, driven, immoral and unethical in her pursuit of power. The book unfortunately was lost in the cacophony of crap when the Palin bus tour was launched at a suspiciously coincidental time so as to swallow the revelations in Bailey’s book. Now there is a new book on flag-draped, dumb-ass America’s sweetheart that is far uglier than the first. Author Joe McGinniss trots out The Rogue which has assholes all along the teabagger right puckering for allegations of drug use and even better yet that Palin had a yearning for fucking black men back in her younger days. Notably an alleged fling with former NBA basketball player Glen Rice during his college career with Michigan when Palin was covering the team and that she had a “fetish’ for black men.

The Palin-Glenn Rice allegation (which hasn’t been denied) conjures an image of Michelle Bachmann going around the world on that Iowa corndog. One has to wonder just how much these third generation Phyllis Schafly’s just have this primal urge to deep throat twelve plus inches of hot meat. Schlafly’s gay son could certainly appreciate it that’s for sure.Sarah Palin just has that twinkle in her eye that makes one believe that she can do more tricks with a six-inch prick than a monkey on a grapevine, the teabaggers see it too which contributes to her enormous popularity with the angry white male masturbator demographic.

 

Back when I was much younger I knew a  black fellow named Lenny Stokes who was quite the cocksman, servicing bored metropolitan Denver area suburban housewives while working for a cable television company. This was back during the cable explosion of the 80’s when every house in America was being wired into Reagan’s propaganda machine. He worked with a partner who was a beer alcoholic Mexican named Hector Olivas with a serious jones for the devil weed. Hec’s favorite brew was Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor or as we used to refer to it due to the glass bottles “little green grenades”. He would show up for work in the mornings with his eyes blood red and reeking of dope, it cut the edge of the previous night’ hangover. Hec’s specialty was to cut under the table deals with those so inclined to participate in order to add the additional channels like Showtime, The Movie Channel, Cinemax etc for extra party money.

 

Lenny Stokes was more into “white pussy”, his favorite saying was “I know that white woman wants some black dick”.  I would say that he put more shots through the hairy hoop than Glenn Rice and who knows, had that gig lasted he may have even given Wilt the Stilt a run for his money in bedding women. Lenny always had the rap with the Christian “bitches’, his daddy back when he was growing up in Enid, Oklahoma had been a preacher and he talked the talk. For some reason that I can only speculate they were the most receptive and sexually frustrated and Lenny was able to connect.

 

I will always remember Lenny and Hec for their sheer luck, one might say, if they are prone to believing in religious nonsense superstition that a higher power had intervened when an outer Brighton area husband happened to get home early while Stokes was delivering the beef and Pete was passed out in the cable truck after a liquid lunch. The hubby went fucking berserk and went for his gun, putting several bullet holes into the back of the escaping white cable truck. I never heard how they managed to explain that to their bosses.

 

Hell, I don’t where I am even going with this other than the Palin-Rice fuckery conjured up memories of an old acquaintance… so I digress…

 

Todd Palin naturally screamed LIES..LIES..LIES. It would be too much for that northern, secessionist, white supremacist to accept that every time that he kissed America’s most well-known hockey mom that he was planting his smackers on a black man’s crank by proxy.

 

The one thing about the whole Palin fucked Glen Rice tale isn’t that she being a young single woman was into hot and nasty sex or that she did some blow on occasion it is the sheer hypocrisy of it all. Palin presents herself as some sort of chaste and holier than thou champion of those “family values” that the debauched Christers in the Republican party have been spouting for decades. Really, if you are going to talk the talk, walk the walk and Sarah Barracuda’s history doesn’t match the rhetoric of the all-American Mama Grizzlie.

Then there is the thing with fucking a black basketball player, not that any sort of interracial sexual activity is any sort of an issue and I personally tend to believe what Senator Jay Bullington Bulworth proposed in that we should all just start fucking one another until everyone looks the same. But whenever one of these pigs from the GOP end up being caught fucking a black man or woman or are caught in an airport bathroom with a cock in their mouth they need to be appropriately vilified. After all, the Republican party is nothing but a neo-Confederate, racist to the bone, anti-gay pack of vicious haters and bullies who would be as in their element in a 1930 German beer hall as they are in their opulent megachurches or local teabagger bund meetings.

 

The book “Rogue” has the right-wing swine in the sort of circle the wagons, attack mode that hornets or WASPS typically instinctively conjure as they scramble when someone has whacked the hive and according to the author the rhetoric is getting close to inciting violence against his person. Hell, it’s sheer hypocrisy once again from these degenerate, fake Christian, fascist pigs. Where the fuck was the outrage over the Regnery Publishing shit that had Hillary Clinton having Satanic lesbian orgies in the White House basement and hanging miniature glass crack pipes from the Clinton’s Christmas tree? I’ll tell you where, it was in the same place where all of this anger and indignation was when Bush was running up the national credit card.

 

Perhaps There is something deeper with Palin’s Obama obsession…. if I cold locate Lenny Stokes, if he is still alive and didn’t get the Steve McNair treatment maybe I could ask him.

The Great Tebow Crusade: A Sports Metaphor for a Delusional Nation

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable…. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.

– H L Mencken

Tim Tebow as a successful starting NFL quarterback? Michele Bachmann as the next U.S. President? Jesus Christ! Of course both of these scenarios are a fantasy as well as a product of a form of non-reality based magical thinking that has come to define American society over the past three decades. There is a deeply entrenched national unwillingness to own up to systemic problems, grossly immoral wars of aggression, a miserably failed economic system that has been falsely pimped off as being a “free” market and the inability to take an honest look at the history of the American empire that hasn’t been revised, sanitized and strained through John Wayne’s dirty underwear have all contributed to our current plight. This is a land where despite massive poverty, joblessness, homelessness and rampant inflation where people actually believe that they too can become a millionaire. This is a land where in true Orwellian style war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength and God is on our side. Americans for the most part still believe that they are free despite the growing police state that surrounds them, that their nation is prosperous rather than on the verge of bankruptcy and that all will be alright despite the evidence that things will never be “right” again.

The illusion is perpetuated by the “media hologram” as the late, great social critic Joe Bageant referred to the ever present electronic propagandizing that allows for the facade of the mythical and now forever lost American dream to be promoted. Old Joe pegged our national media as “a feast of bullshit and spectacle”, the Romans referred to a pre-technology version of the distractions that masked the decline of their mighty empire as “panem et circenses” or as it is more commonly known “bread and circuses”. The national infatuation with pure fantasy and triviality that serves to distract and to make one forget is exemplified not only by movies, video games and cheesy tabloid celebrity scandals but in the ongoing games that are played, gladiatorial epics for the modern age. In this country, no sport is revered as much as professional football and no sports league is as saturated with the underlying cultural indoctrination of warfare, capitalism and patriotic fervor as the NFL. Now, the already overpowering affirmation of the glorious, capitalist warfare state is about to get religion as well. The story of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, a champion to radical American Cristendom and the coordinated push to transform a man child of mediocre talent into an orange clad savior, national celebrity and to likely serve as a springboard into national politics is a fascinating cultural study of an America gone horribly awry and steeped in a dangerous and terminal denial.

I must admit, I have a serious interest in the ongoing Tim Tebow melodrama for several reasons. First and foremost I fear the forces behind him and understand all too well the power of those who have been most accurately described by writer Chris Hedges as the “American Fascists”. I also have been deeply disgusted, dare I say ashamed of the ongoing infantilization and dumbing down of America over the last several decades, it has only become worse largely due to a corrupt, consolidated corporate media. I have come to despise the loathsome transformation of what was once the most powerful economy largely thanks to a robust and vibrant middle class into a sucking black hole of despair for the majority of the population due to the rise of the looter class and the new feudalism. Finally, I have always had a serious jones for professional football, not only the now fully corporatized NFL but for the Denver Broncos in particular. I grew up and lived a large chunk of my life in Denver where local team has long been a revered symbol of local if not regional pride. From my earliest days I have followed the Broncos. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, still bleed Bronco orange and have hated the goddamned Oakland Raiders since childhood. The great Tebow crusade that is ongoing gives me a chance to not only take a detour from my trademark political screeds into the sports world but also to point out that the entire ongoing drama is just a microcosm of all that is currently wrong with this society. The tale of the young wunderkind, a wholly manufactured celebrity right up there with the Kardashians and the masses of adoring fans who have anointed the youngster as the second coming of John Elway despite the inconvenient truth that Tebow couldn’t consistently hit a horse in the ass at ten yards with a tight spiral is the story of a delusional nation itself.

Tim Tebow is the latest version of the University of Florida quarterback (eg: Danny Wuerffel, Doug Johnson, Rex Grossman) who largely due to the spread offense run by the Gators has immense success in college but is poorly suited for the big time. Despite leading the UF to two national championships, largely because of his size and running ability Tebow was not deemed to be a top pro prospect, he was a “project”, better suited to play a position other than quarterback and was likely only a third rounder even to the most optimistic. His last meaningful game for the Gators was a butt ugly 32-13 mugging by the Alabama Crimson Tide in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the score indicated. Tebow was crying as he left the field, the tracks his tears cutting swaths through his trademark biblical verses inscribed in eye black (the NCAA would ban such displays with the “Tebow Rule”), his dreams of NFL stardom potentially crushed. While playing in the Senior Bowl for the South team in an offense not tailored to him Tebow stunk the place out, the problems with his throwing mechanics were exposed, further damaging his pro prospects. But then the miracles began to be manufactured, thanks to a colossal public relations offensive Tebow would work diligently to change his throwing motion.

Enter the canny NFL traveler Jon Gruden who despite having never had the patience or wherewithal to develop young talent during his coaching gigs had somehow managed to get anointed as some sort of guru. Gruden stated with a strait face that Tebow could “revolutionize” the pro game and he himself would assist with polishing the turd pre-draft in order to ensure that Tebow would be drafted in the first round. Another former Tampa Bay Buc coach, the sainted Tony Dungy also spoke out on Tebow’s greatness, note that Dungy’s quarterbacking savvy was on display with Trent Dilfer and Shaun King, he inherited Peyton Manning when he was run out of Tampa after his team quit on him in the playoffs for the second year in a row. At least Dilfer eventually won a Super Bowl by riding the swarming Ravens defense, Gruden however has only journeyman Bruce Gradkowski to claim as his most successful pupil. Now with the woeful Bengals who are his fifth team, Gradkowski is still more known for his involvement in a federal gambling investigation from his college days at Toledo than for his actual on field achievements or more appropriately, the lack thereof. With the Christian right-wing propaganda machine and a big name like Gruden onboard Tebow’s NFL draft potential was in the full blown perception management stages. Despite naysayers like Dallas owner Jerry Jones who drew fire for stating that “he’d never get on the field” when commenting on whether the Cowboys would draft him and draft prognosticator Mel Kiper who projected him as an H-Back as well as another Eric Crouch a former Cornhuskers college star who couldn’t play quarterback in the NFL . So the table was set for the draft. All that Team Tebow needed was a sucker, and they found one in then Denver Broncos coach Josh McDaniels.

The Josh McDaniels era will forever live in infamy among Bronco loyalists. Two time Super Bowl winner Mike Shanahan whose legendary status had taken a big hit in the post-Elway years was sent packing after yet another disappointing season. Despite the availability of several better prospects owner Pat Bowlen picked the 33 year old Bill Belichick disciple right down to the game day hoodie. McDaniels immediately alienated incumbent starting quarterback Jay Cutler, himself a colossal asshole and the town wasn’t big enough for the two of them. The relationship became so strained that Cutler was shipped off to the Chicago Bears for a package of high draft picks and QB Kyle Orton. It was the first in a series of botched personnel decisions that would come to define the McDaniels reign of error. The Broncos had an immediate opportunity to hit it big in the draft by using the picks on quarterback Josh Freeman who is looking like a franchise player in Tampa and All Pro linebacker Clay Matthews but ended up with a running back with happy feet in Knowshon Moreno and linebacker Robert Ayers who was already looking like a bust by midseason. Not only did McDaniels waste those picks on schmucks but also traded away a future draft pick to move up in the second round and draft cornerback Alphonso Smith who was so bad that he was shipped off the next year to Detroit for scrub tight end Dan Gronkowski. That was a pretty piss poor acquisition for what would have been the 14th overall pick in the 2010 draft. It was a harbinger of what was to come under McDaniels.

Early on the Broncos were the surprise of the season in going 6-0 out of the gates. Orton was playing better than Cutler and Bowlen was looking like a genius. The high water mark of the McDaniels era was when the Broncos, dressed in their throwback mustard yellow uniforms with the infamous vertically striped socks bested Belichick’s New England Patriots 20-17 in overtime in the giant corporate cistern that is Invesco Field. Chock up a rare win in San Diego the next week and the Broncos went into their bye week with a full head of steam. Then the wheels came off. There were four straight losses, three of them to playoff teams but one to the heinous Redskins, one of the worst teams in the league. Orton couldn’t make a play to save his life and the defense blew up, by the time that the dust settled the season was over and the Broncos were 8-8. The worst indicator of just how much of an illusion that the 6-0 start had been though were two miserable home losses to hated divisional rivals to close out the season. In a 20-19 loss to the Raiders the Broncos gave up 241 rushing yards, 83 or so on 3 consecutive plays. They also did the impossible by making the lamentable failure that is Jamarcus Russell into a hero, the former top pick threw the winning touchdown in the waning seconds. Two weeks later in the season finale Denver was steamrollered by the Kansas City Chiefs, giving up 317 rushing yards, 259 of them to Jamal Charles in a humiliating 44-24 loss.

With a 2-8 death spiral largely being the result of a porous defense you would think that shoring up the D would have been a priority in the offseason. The Broncos finally were able to unload chronic malcontent receiver Brandon Marshall for more draft picks and despite the 2009 draft debacle were still standing well in terms of being able to reload. It would instead be the capstone that would come to define the McDaniels legacy, and it would hang over Denver like a brown cloud after his departure. But first, another notable McDaniels personnel move, he traded fan favorite running back Peyton Hillis who had rarely see the field in 2009 to Cleveland for the disappointing quarterback Brady Quinn, a former Notre Dame star whose NFL career has been a bust. Not only was Quinn buried on the depth chart but Hillis went on to be a star with the Browns, rolling to 1,177 yards, 11 touchdowns and landed on the cover of the mega-selling video game Madden 12. The 11 scores by Hillis were six more than Denver non-quarterbacks would tally all year.

In the 2010 draft McDaniels was wheeling and dealing, trading up and down like his mentor Belichik only that the average Madden player had more football sense. The Broncos despite their porous defense inexplicable spent their first five picks on offense before picking cornerback Perrish Cox, a sex offender. The first pick was spent on WR Demaryius Thomas who has yet to prove he can do anything but fumble and get injured. Then, with the 25th overall pick McDaniels grabbed Tebow away, despite the fact that several quarterback starved teams took a flyer on the Gainesville wonder. Also notable from the 2010 draft was an offensive lineman named Zane Beadles chosen 45th overall despite the fact that he wasn’t even listed in the fucking Sporting News draft guide. To the Christers it was mission accomplished, they had been successful in getting their Manchurian candidate into the first round, number 15 Bronco jerseys led the league in merchandise sales and there was jubilation in the virulent snakepit of hatred and homophobia Focus the Family headquarters that was about 2 hrs south of Denver via I-25. Radical cleric James Dobson’s organization had been behind the Tebow Super Bowl ad where he was trotted out to give a toned down anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights message during the big game. In Tebow they had planted the flag in order to in the words of Jon Gruden “revolutionize” the game by making it a showcase for their bastardized version of Christianity. Not that the NFL doesn’t encourage the promulgation of political memes (as long as they don’t come from guys like Rashard Mendenhall) in that damned near every contest – especially the big ones are a showcase for militarism and empire.

So the Jesus juice was flowing and the second season of Josh McDaniels was to begin with not only a putrid defense but a festering quarterback controversy. There would be no 6-0 start in 2010, the McDaniels death watch officially began with a for the ages 59-14 degradation at home against the Raiders that would all but knock the Broncos out of playoff contention by the time that trick or treaters began to make their rounds. By the time that their record reached 3-9, aided by an asinine “Spygate” style filming of the 49ers practices prior to a week loss loss in Wembley, England where McDaniels was nabbed imitating Belichik (who at least won when he cheated) Pat Bowlen pulled the plug on Little Napoleon. The interim coach, Eric Studesville handed the reigns to Tebow who delighted the zealots with his running ability in posting a win and a near win against stricken teams that had already given up the ghost. The larger motive in the Tebow promotion was likely the desire of Bowlen to sell seats in the final games, a 3-11 team with a pitiful defense that would give up a whopping NFL worst 471 points isn’t a very good draw. When Tebow ran for the winning TD against Houston on the day after Jesus’s fake birthday it was the high-water mark of his pro career. After another loss to the Chargers in which Tebow ran for 94 yards the season was mercifully over and the wreckage began to be sorted through.

Desperate for positive public relations Bowlen brought in John Elway to run the team’s football operations. The new leadership then brought in John Fox, a proven adult head coach and did the right thing in drafting for defense, landing top defensive prospect Von Miller with the first pick. The lockout though put the fate of the season in the balance and halted all player transactions. This allowed for the further fermentation of the Tebow meme as the media and the Christian subculture exalted that their champion would be running the team when the season finally got under way. The television networks nor the sponsors would feature Tebow prominently and as often as possible to juice ratings and bring in advertising dollars, their new Christ was ascending the mount. That was until reality set in. The lockout eventually ended, there being far too much money at stake for it not to and the teams reported to their respective training camps. Once in session it became very apparent to anyone but the Tebow cultists that their boy sucked, his heralded throwing motion change had yet to take hold and the lack of an off season conditioning program didn’t bode well for development. I mean you can only get so much work on the arm trolling the nation’s Wal-Marts and other gathering places for boobus Americanus to autograph copies of your best selling autobiography. According to those in the know, Tebow was throwing the ball in the stands, dirt and everywhere but where the playbook dictated. Then he did what many of his entitled generation did – he sulked. In a recent column by longtime Denver sportswriter Woody Paige Tebus whined that the starting quarterback job had been given to him but was “grabbed back away”. This of course was immediately amplified by the media and was decried by Tebow Nation as nothing short of heresy and they swarmed to his rescue. Even King James bestowed his blessing on Tebow; LeBron James that is, the perennially pouting overpaid, underachieving Prima Donna last seen quitting on his team a few months back in the NBA finals. As the saying goes, with friends like that…

And it has been on ever since. Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Morrissey has ensured that his email box will be filled with hateful diatribes from teabagging Tebow cultists by daring to publish the following piece of smoking blasphemy entitled Worship of Broncos’ Tim Tebow making for a dilemma in Denver from which I excerpt:

There are two competing groups when it comes to public opinion on Tim Tebow.

The first group thinks Tebow is God’s gift to humanity and that his NFL quarterbacking skills will catch up to his holiness if the Denver Broncos ever give him a chance.

The second group is creeped out by the first group.

AND –

But armed with the irrefutable evidence that somebody out there, or up there, believed Tebow was worthy of being a first-rounder, his supporters became emboldened. It’s why there’s a quarterback controversy in Denver right now for no good reason.

This is what happens when you reach to take a player who has a bigger reputation for piety than he does for touchdown passes. The pressure on John Elway, the Broncos’ new vice president of football operations, is significant. Tebow is much, much more than a football player. He’s a symbol for a large swath of people who see him as the best of what Christianity has to offer.

His autobiography, Through My Eyes, has been on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list since it came out eight weeks ago. His jersey was the third-highest seller in the NFL last season, despite the fact he started only three games.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. The people have spoken, and they like Tim Tebow. A lot. But the people shouldn’t decide who gets to play quarterback.

Elway, much like President Obama moved into his new office to immediately find a bag of flaming dogshit parked on the doorstep by his predecessor. Obama only preceded to make the disaster worse by stomping up and down on the bag, spraying liquefied dogshit everywhere by not only failing to correct the damage done by the Bushreich but further cementing his policies, escalating his wars and exacerbating the damage to the economy by catering to the whims of right-wing scum. Whether Elway will choose the same path in caving in to vicious thugs and mouth breathing, bible pounding swine by trading the vastly superior Orton away in order to go all in with Tebow has yet to be seen. The pressure will be intense and the national media spotlight which always seeking out controversy to drive ratings will be pointing the way towards Dove Valley like the Star of Bethlehem. 

By far the greatest challenge of Elway’s football career will be in just how he handles the weapon of mass destruction parked in his locker room with the “Tebow Thing” In dealing with not only the national media parasites but also local hack columnists such as the Denver Post’s Mark Kiszla’s man crush on Tebow. I excerpt this vomit inducing portion of a recent column entitled DenverBroncos Must Let Tebow Be Tebow:

 

Tim Tebow is not a paint-by-numbers quarterback. So why do the Broncos seem bent on turning him into Brian Griese, your plain vanilla game manager and the football equivalent of a certified public accountant?

The extreme makeover of Tebow has revealed a clumsy robot in need of a system reboot. It’s pure folly to recast an improvisational player as a pocket passer.

Tebow needs to be Tebow.

After feeling the heat from criticism this summer, Tebow repeatedly expressed a desire Wednesday to “have fun.”

But where did the unpredictable fun in his game go? Whatever happened to the instinctive rambler who wore No. 15 for the Broncos? While it sometimes appears that Tebow’s technique has regressed since his rookie season, maybe the real problem is lost identity.

Basically this horses ass is proposing that the Broncos just do away with the offensive playbook and let Tebow play fucking sandlot ball. I understand that Christianity is a primitive and simple-minded form of thinking best suited for Neanderthals and other half-monkeys. The entire premise of letting Tebow freelance is ludicrous and dishonest, ever since a couple of guys named Flintstone and Rubble were chucking the rock around there has been a need for at least some sort of coherent offensive philosophy. Kiszla really bares his chops later in the column for comparing the orange clad 23 year old messiah with none other than Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, something that got the pouty, overrated loser Jay Cutler vilified for. 

More from Kiszla:

 

Here’s the funny thing. When worry lines crease the face of Broncos executive John Elway as he wonders how long it might take Tebow to realize even an improvisational master must learn to win games from the pocket in the NFL, old No. 7 starts to look and sound a little like Dan Reeves.

Nobody who remembers houses in Denver painted orange can forget. Reeves gave Elway the fourth quarter to become an NFL legend of the comeback drive, but only after forcing the Stanford grad to operate at 5 mph under the speed limit for the majority of games during the 1980s.

The conservative approach by Reeves irked Elway. It contributed to the demise of a relationship between a frustrated superstar and his stubborn coach. Denver sided with Elway. Reeves departed.

Is it just me, or does the apprehensive sweat on the back of Elway’s neck as he contemplates handing Tebow the car keys smell like karma?

No, actually it smells like bullshit and Kiszla should know better than to toss Tebow’s salad like that. While Dan Reeves offensive philosophy stank and did much to adversely affect Elway’s career stats, allowing petulant, lesser talented losers like Dan Marino, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning to dominate the record books at least Reeves HAD an offensive philosophy. The problem with the Reeves era is that the personnel around Elway sucked. When you are counting on running backs named Sammy Winder, Gerald Wilhite, Gaston Green and Steve Sewell to execute a conservative ball control based attack you are going to have serious problems. Couple that with receivers the likes of Vance Johnson (the best by far in Elway’s early career), Mark Jackson, Ricky Nattiel and Clarence Kay, a porous offensive line and a consistently inconsistent defense  and you have the real reason why Elway had to deal with the weekly stress of having to perform like (to steal it from Tebow) Jesus Christ in performing fourth quarter miracles. John Elway only became a Super Bowl winner when the level of talent around him was vastly upgraded in the final years of his career. 

Elway has become famous in NFL lore for “The Drive” comeback against the cursed Marty Schottenheimer’s Cleveland Browns in the 1986 AFC Championship game. But it wasn’t his greatest comeback, that was on January 4, 1992 in the old Mile High Stadium against the Houston Oilers (now the Tennessee Titans) in the divisional playoffs.

It was colder than a witch’s tit that day and myself and my buddies Rockie and Big Johnson were well prepared. We had scored four tickets in the legendary south stands for the game earlier in the week. The Broncos were coming off of a surprising 12-4 season and the first playoff game was against the AFC Central champ Oilers. We were well prepped for the game, like a mini-version of the loaded trunk of Hunter S. Thompson’s Chevy convertible in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas we were well stocked with booze, herb and other intoxicants. Having been running on very little sleep and still hung over (and in Big Johnson’s case badly so) from the night before we were nipping at the hair of the dog as we rolled into the outer parking lots. We were smoking dope and nursing Big Gulp cups filled with red beer (having stopped off at King Soopers on the way to the game for tomato juice) to gradually ease into the other stuff. The lots around the stadium were already filled with tailgaters and the smell of roasting meat hung in the January air. We grabbed a spot and began to get into battle dress, being back in the days before America became a proto-fascist, greed fueled police state where the ever present phony threat of “terrorism” gave license to avaricious owners to subject fans to everything but a body cavity search on the way in lest they smuggle in their own beverages and cut down on $9 beer sales we could get away with practically anything. We all carried those seat cushions only they contained cans of beer instead of foam stuffing, flasks of Jack Daniels sippin’ whiskey to take the bite off of the cold later in the game as dusk would fall. We also had also backloaded our cigarette packs with a number of marijuana joints. That would be good enough to get us through the afternoon; the only way that we could run short would be if the game went into overtime. After the game we would go and eat some good Mexican food and hit the titty bars.

We got to our seats just before kickoff and settled in for the game and it didn’t start out well, the Oilers had taken the opening kickoff 70 yards in less than two minutes. A good amount of fans were still milling around trying to settle in and the Broncos were already down a score. The first Denver possession resulted in nothing other than a punt and the Oilers promptly drove for a second score. By early in the second quarter the loyal fans in Mile High were restive as Houston quarterback Warren Moon or “Warren Coon” as the shamelessly fucked up Rockie and Big Johnson were heckling him, much to the delight of many in our vicinity in the south stands quickly grabbed a 21-6 lead. Rocky and Big Johnson had recently discovered the Rush Limbaugh show and like many angry white male losers the siren song of the grand poobah of white cultural populism they were easily ensnared by the trolling net. Myself, being apolitical at the time really had no understanding that they were in the early stages of a disease that would come to define our country for the coming two nightmarish decades. A new form of country that would later be exemplified in the rise of Tim Tebow as a bizarre sort of Elway doppelganger to Broncos fans.

By the fourth quarter Denver had closed the gap to 24-23 thanks to a botched extra point by kicker David Treadwell. The Bronco defense, after a horrific start had held Houston to only a fourth quarter field goal in the second half. By the time the Broncos got the ball for the last time, they were pinned at their own two yard line by a Houston punt. Then it was Elway time, a mixture of skill, desperation and improvisational wizardry that was the real deal, not the sort of bullshit that Mark Kiszla writes in advocacy of Tim Tebow. John Elway converted two fourth downs on that drive, the first time escaping a near sack and running for the marker on fourth and six to get a new set of downs with 1:38 left. After three straight incomplete passes due to a heavy pass rush, and with clutch receiver Michael Young having been injured on the drive, on fourth and ten Elway scrambled, held up and launched a strike to Vance Johnson who took the ball to the Oiler 21, a 44 yard pass play, a good deal of it on a run past the stunned Houston sideline and a sickly looking Warren Moon. After a ten yard Steve Sewell run Treadwell atoned for his missed extra point by kicking the winning field goal with 16 seconds left. The place erupted in pandemonium, Big Johnson jumped up, already hoarse from shouting at “Warren Coon” for the entire game and vomited on the couple in front of us who we had earlier been passing around a doobie with. Those were the days when Elway often had to win the games largely by himself and there is no comparison – zip, nada, zilch to the fallacious argument made by Mark Kiszla and the Christian Right P.R. machine that Tebow is just a younger version of John Elway. The first ballot Hall of Famer racked up five Super Bowl appearances, two of them wins, he also racked up 148 total wins, 300 passing touchdowns, 51,475 passing yards, 3,417 rushing yards, 47 fourth quarter comebacks, nine Pro Bowl appearances. And John Elway was the consensus top quarterback prospect in the NFL draft his rookie year, not a product of wishful thinking and public relations.

But I Digress…..

I too remember the days when fans painted their houses orange, died their lawns orange, sat in sub zero temperatures on the capitol steps in Denver immersed in a vat of orange jello to win Super Bowl tickets, dined on orange pancakes and orange and blue tortilla chips. My time as a fan preceded Kisla’s tenure as the resident Denver Post ass-suckler and I remember the bad old days before the miracle season of 1977 when the Broncos went 12-2 and to their first Super Bowl. Their quarterback was a Christian then too but Craig Morton didn’t flaunt it and use it as a raison d’être but back in those days Christians for the most part were humble and followed the actual teachings of Christ, not the devil’s gospel of Timothy LaHaye, John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their ilk more concerned with their political agendas than anything uttered during the Sermon on the Mount. Morton could also win football games in the NFL and had the league been a corporate juggernaut in those days he too would have led the Broncos in jersey sales. 

While Tebow couldn’t carry Elway’s jockstrap (despite what his cult may believe) hope springs eternal in Denver after the nadir of 2010. There are already whispers that the Broncos will be targeting a young gun in next year’s draft and if he falls perhaps Stanford’s Andrew Luck would be a great fit. It is obvious that Kyle Orton is not the long-term solution and Tebow is an albatross and the media circus only ensures that he will be a distraction that will ultimately split the locker room. In the new era of Elway and Fox it is already apparent to all but the delusional that Tebow, like the rest of the cancer from the McDaniels era must be cut out, the sooner the better. Miami needs a quarterback and Tebow could be a nice fit in the Wildcat offense that the team utilizes, he would also be back in the sunshine state and would sell tickets. The show would be also be very entertaining as he tries to mesh with former Bronco receiver Brandon Marshall who is already on the outs in South Florida. The answer though is that Tebow must go and the sooner the better, even if the Broncos get nothing in return, look at the first rounder for Dan Gronkowski, just chalk it up as another McDaniels failure, eat the loss and move on. That’s really the only way at this point, anything else will only delay the recovery.

As with so many things in this torn apart country the great Tebow debate comes down to those who live in a reality based world and a world of make believe. I never said that Tim Tebow wasn’t a good guy, only that he is a false idol who will never be a successful quarterback on the NFL level. Those who use the young man to shove their hateful religion down the throats of the masses are obscene, loathsome and cynical and in the end they are ultimately damaging Tebow himself. Then these are the type who could care less about compassion, empathy, fairness and human decency, the things that that long-haired liberal Jesus Christ preached about. They would just as soon burn everyone who disagrees with their hijacking of a religion at the stake using green wood, the bible warned of these people and they are legion, their burning hatred only surpassed by their failure to acknowledge that which is reality.  

Tebow may yet find quarterbacking success in the Mile High City, perhaps with the coming Arena Football expansion team that Denver is expected to land.

The Republican Perpetual Hate Machine

 
“What was behind that consuming hatred? At first I thought that it was mere evangelical passion. Evangelical Christianity, as everybody knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love”

-H.L. Mencken


Mounting war casualties, global warming, millions of uninsured, inability to control our borders, skyrocketing deficits, falling dollar, whopping trade imbalances, gas gouging, corporate corruption, wars and rumors of wars, a burst housing market bubble, illegal government spying, rampant systemic corruption, torture, war atrocities, the growing threat of a domestic mercenary army, a crumbling infrastructure, Bin Laden still on the loose, failing schools, loss of competitiveness, war profiteering, a shrinking middle class, health care crisis, rigged markets, terrorist plots, congressional scandals, traitors residing in the White House, politicizing the judicial system, creeping police state paranoia: BIG FUCKING DEAL!

Overturning Roe v. Wade as a step towards relegating women to their rightful subordinate places in a strong daddy ‘Christian’ nation – “a glorious day of human liberty and freedom” according to the zealotous Sam Brownback – now that is a major crisis deserving of all the energy that a potential future Republican president can muster. Thursday night’s shameful parade of dissembling shitheads assembled at the iconic Ronald Reagan’s presidential library was a stunning exhibition of just how low that Republicans will go in order to pander to the American fascists of the Bible Belt Taliban – with the notalbe exception of 9/11 fear pimp Rudy Giuliani whose hedged response drew the media as sharks to chum or more apropos as flies to shit. Secondary to propping themselves up as bulwarks to shore up that all important wedge issue as a barricade between the godly and the godless was near lockstep unison (with the exception of Texas Congressman Ron Paul who will be marginalized very,very quickly) in adhering to continuing to wage perpetual imperialist wars lest the Rapture be postponed and the return of whoop ass Jesus to smite the heathens and liberals be put off.

Can you give me one big fucking heartfelt “Hallelujah”?

Somewhat lost in the media saturation coverage of the anti-abortion cacophony of parasites during that dog and pony show featuring ten nattering nabobs of nonsense pandering to a dangerous fringe element was the Pelosi-Hoyer House passage of a new hate crimes bill that could potentially deprive the right wing perpetual hate machine of much of the fuel that it needs to run at peak level. As the parable goes you should judge a man by his deeds and not his words, and may the mass Republican rejection of the addition of gender and sexual orientation to federally protected categories under hate crimes law be exposed for all that it is. In another era another rogue regime and it’s vicious mobs took to the streets to scream “JUDEN” and to smash windows, loot, pillage and burn and who in the fuck knows what sort of mayhem will be unleashed with our naked emperor’s decree of a coming veto which will place his seal of approval on the rapidly metastasizing cancer that is eating away at our society courtesy of an overabundance of well paid, frothing at the mouth fascist demagogues.

And in keeping true to his ongoing appeasement of the rubber fetus crowd Le Enfant Terrible has also served notice that the next one of his onslaught of vetoes post condoning mass pogroms against gays will be to continue to wage no holds barred culture war by striking down any potential legislative measures that impede the progress of the replacement of the Constitution with the Malleus Maleficarum. I am unabashedly in favor of abortion which I personally feel is vastly underrated as if applied correctly we could nip the mass production of the progeny of these goose stepping theocratic tyrants in the bud since they are anyway doomed to a lifetime of hateful ignorance courtesy of the retrograde moron home schooling that is so popular among the dominionists. If you don’t think that the children of the corn are potentially dangerous – then look at the American madrassas like the one in the movie Jesus Camp where these impressionable young minds are being programmed exactly like their Islamic counterparts who are taught to shoot a gun as soon as they are capable of holding one and where hateful ephitets are learned as parts of the vocabulary right after mommy, daddy and potty. In fact since these fucking retards don’t believe in birth control to limit their dumping of their toxic waste on society mass abortion should seriously be considered. Hell, we can even make it retroactive as far as I am concerned because the more of these fuckers that can be eliminated the better – but I am rambling and babbling now so I digress.

The ongoing Republican tailoring of the message in order to appeal to these lunatics is like the Antichrist himself is sticking his flickering forked tongue out for a longing passionate kiss from the pathetic degenerates of the base -serpentine, lascivious, steamy, lustful, begging for an embrace. Go to him, give yourself over to your darkest urges, unleash your desires and press your lips to his – only do not open your eyes as you will discover that it is a fetid demon reeking of brimstone and rendered rancid and unholy by the hatred that it feeds upon and the souls that it has so easily seduced.

The base must be fed, their primal instincts oozing from their unkempt, savage pores and polluting the air in their immediate vicinity with a palpable stench. Karl Rove like Colonel Kilgore recognizes a smell that can be equated to ‘victory’ and therefore mans the parapets above the rabble in the courtyard and chucks down chunks of bloody red meat by the shovelful because they must feed in order to survive, like the dumb animals that they are. The yokels that are the ignorant, unwashed, uneducated, hate crazed, Jesus juicing, bible thumping, cross burning, NASCAR watching, knuckle-dragging red state fascists need constant nourishment to keep their strength up for when they are unleashed on decent society.

And with the renewed ‘culture war’ offensive we all can rest assured that those KBR detention camps that have been funded by YOUR tax dollars will soon be open for business. Much like the right-wing prototype Adolf Hitler the Republican Nazi Party are once again eager to emphasize they are determined to assign subhuman status to a large group of their own citizenry. Never mind that the real subhumans are the same south of the Mason-Dixon line knuckle draggers whose slothful existence is an affront to the concept of a progressive civilization as well as to the idea of the superior intelligence of mankind over such lesser creatures as swamp dwelling slugs much like our southern brethren.

The Bush administration however is all too happy to cast their lot once and for all with the same ignorant sons of bitches and bastards whose complete lack of anything within their inner selves that even remotely resembles an ability to think either critically or rationally have damned near turned ‘democracy’ into a pox on western civilization. When a bewildered herd of dirty, rebel flag waving, grit sucking mongrels are allowed so much leeway in determining the outcome of the very elections that at least in theory allow for a representative government that acts on behalf of and in the best interests of all of the people to enforce their Neanderthal will down the throats of normal Americans it may be time to rethink this whole fucking mess and look for a more effective system. Don’t count on the whores of the DLC to figure out how to build better mousetraps either, they are too busy collecting their regular installments of thirty pieces of silver from corporate greedheads who care even less about this fucking country than the GOP base or Al Qaeda for that matter – not that there is much difference as they share the same goals.

After all, these are the same goddamned idiots who gave us George W. Bush as their champion in the first place and subsequently turned us into both the enemy and the laughingstock of the entire civilized world. General Sherman shouldn’t have stopped with burning down Atlanta, he should have torched the entire fucking south and then sowed the fields with salt so that nothing could ever grow there again…we all make strategic blunders and unfortunately William Tecumseh Sherman couldn’t see into the future to where the rebel flag would fly again throughout the red states and the dumbest, most hateful, regressive toads in America would one day also hold the most political power. You see, to the peckerwood rubes of the south this is a continuation of the Civil War, a rematch and a chance to get even and their ancestors may have gotten their asses handed to them on the battlefield but they hold a mean-assed grudge that is passed down through each generation in a very European fashion and now they are determined to settle the score.

The fires of southern indignation are stoked by bigotry, religious intolerance, willful ignorance, belligerent nationalism, indignity over the loss of the civil war has been passed down through generations as well and the people have been turned mean. This cultural and intellectual malaise is further facilitated by poor educational opportunities, lack of upward mobility and by demagogues ranting about the evils of liberalism, the welfare state and those who would seek to remove god from their society. Being that a large portion of southerners are held in sway by the snake handlers in the pulpits of both strip mall and mega churches they are easily dominated and controlled by those who seek to exploit their regressive views and imbecilic mentalities to further their own abilities to hold power. Jim Crow is still alive and well in many areas of the south, only this time instead of being at the forefront of southern culture he exists just beneath the surface, like a killer shark lurking, waiting to feed and homosexuals are just the appetizer.

In Chris Hedges’ outstanding new book American Fascists the author 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.

Radical cleric James Dobson and the rest of the blasphemous cocksuckers who have stolen Jesus under the cover of a television projected electronic umbrella of mass national ignorance are taking to their goat barn pulpits to roar hellfire and damnation at the godless heathen liberals for daring to limit their spewing of hatred against the mythical and dreaded ‘homosexual agenda’. Dobson was among the first to threaten retribution against the White House if the hate crime bill wasn’t smacked down immediately. Herr Dobson was quoted in an Associated Press story as saying that the intention of the legislation was…:

“to muzzle people of faith who dare to express their moral and biblical concerns about homosexuality.” If you read the Bible in a certain way, he told his broadcast listeners, “you may be guilty of committing a ’thought crime.”’

I might elaborate in my own words that when it really comes down to it if you “read the bible in a certain way” you could also come to believe that Jesus is a bloodthirsty warmonger with a deep seated hatred of the poor and downtrodden that is only exceeded by his lust for war – and especially for the epic carnage of a bloodletting for the ages that would claim the lives of more Jews than were killed by Hitler so that the wet dreams of rapture pimps like Timothy LaHaye can come to pass.

Jesus Christ said not one fucking word about homosexuality but he did preach at length about that other dreaded H word that the right hates like a vampire hates garlic and a theocrat hates the constitution – HYPOCRISY! And what better example of this rampant hypocrisy than the notorious White House sex toy who is the phony reporter and gay prostitute Jeff Gannon (hotmilitarystuds.com) show up for the yesterday’s National Day of Prayer on the Capitol lawn as a spokesman for the International Bible Reading Association. And then there is Pastor Ted and every other closet dwelling, two-faced lowlife who whores themselves out to the Republican party’s anti-American agenda. At least atheists also showed up in Washington too announcing a National Day Of Reason (which didn’t garner much media attention) to offer a counter to the freaks which while having lower attendance than even a typical Tampa Bay Devil Rays home game had the best line of the day as attributed to Rick Wingrove via the WA PO’s Dana Milbank:

“This is the beginning of a theocratic dictatorship, or maybe a better name is a holy dictatorship. “You might as well be reading the charter documents of the freaking Taliban”

Touché!

But it isn’t about Jesus Christ at all now is it? It’s all about power and the ability to exploit the blind spots in democracy in order to obtain the slimmest of margins and to then exercise the tyranny of the majority to use the power of the government in order to crush all those deemed as lesser beings beneath the jackbooted heels of a theocratic fascist police state. Were Christ to return to earth tomorrow he would be decried as a treasonous liberal by the GOP state controlled media, would be denounced as a long haired, anti-American peacenik who supports the terrorists, hates freedom, is a commie and is unpatriotic. Then after the electronic crucifixion would be arrested as an enemy combatant and would be just another Middle-Eastern man in an orange jumpsuit locked up in a tiny cell in Gitmo. You see, GOP Jesus and today’s Pharisees and moneychangers have so successfully chased Jesus of Nazareth’s ass out of the temple and he sure as hell ain’t ever coming back as long as they have any fucking thing to say about it.

If there is such a place as hell then goddammit may all of these diseased pig-fuckers one day rot there and may they be forced to spend all of eternity blowing flock after flock of Satan’s personal pet goats all the while being heckled by the Reverend Fred Phelps and Rick Santorum. And when the goats are tired of being sucked off then may they all roast on spits until their rotten flesh boils and rolls off of their carcasses like tallow. But until then let there be legislation or whatever else that it takes to marginalize the utter vileness of these vomit spewing ass clowns. Let them be marginalized and mocked and chased from the public realm where they can conduct their black masses over the boiling and festering cauldrons of hate that are their congregations. Let them retreat to the confines of their taxpayer subsidized mega-churches where they hold their bund meetings and covet each other’s asses, wives and sports utility vehicles and let them stay there, stigmatized as the lepers that they are by a society that has no time for the psychopathic ravings of such scum. And let there be laws so that whenever they slime out for their thinly veiled pogroms that the police have the power to turn the fire hoses on them and to wash all of the rats into the sewers where they belong….and then weld the manhole covers shut to keep it down there forever.

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.

Gott Mit Uns

 

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.” 

-Friedrich Nietzsche

The rise to power of the radical religious right in America has been a terrifying spectacle to watch. Most of the population goes about their daily lives completely oblivious to the growing malignancy of this dangerous tumor on the body of a secular democratic society that incrementally finds itself becoming less of both. This is the first of a series of posts over the coming months that I am going to use to take a good hard look at what is potentially the greatest threat that this country has ever faced and has the potential to metastasize into something malignantly evil that will change the lives of Americans forever in a way that is only too evident when reviewing history as well as theocratic regimes that are in existence elsewhere in the world today.

There is something fundamentally wrong on the most basic of levels with a society in which much of the raw political power rests within a fanatical segment that rejects any reality other than the one that they have been misled and indoctrinated into being truth. These people believe that the Earth is only in the neighborhood of 4,000 years old despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise, they believe that the Grand Canyon was created by the same flood in which Noah once cruised around for forty days and forty nights in a giant wooden ark filled with animals (can you imagine the stench?) and that they will one day be lifted out of their clothes and transported en masse to the heavens where they will sit at the right hand of God himself to watch the rest us be tortured, torn to bits and to suffer unspeakable acts of violence along with plagues and pestilence.

It is a very dangerous group that is already so completely delusional (check the DSM IV) that they find it easy to swallow lies that grow bigger and more brazen as the false prophets who call their cadence rise to national prominence, positions of influence and celebrity in their own right. They believe that God chose George W. Bush to rule and to fight a holy crusade against Islamofascism (what a bogus word but the linguists in the GOP had to appropriate the word fascism for themselves lest a connection be made to their own means of true fascist rule and the leaders and thinkers who champion it) and that the founders of the United States had every intention of creating a government more along the ideological underpinnings of Cotton Mather rather than of Thomas Jefferson.

They also are led to believe in the nefarious threat of the dreaded ‘homosexual agenda’ and that gay marriage is such a grave threat to the very existence to their family and their institutions that they can always be counted on to march to the polls and to vote against their own self interests as well as the best interests of their very children, often preferring to send them to bed cold and hungry so that total war can be waged on science, tolerance, liberty and the progressive society that they so vehemently deplore. It is unfortunate that their children will likely never understand the damage that is being done to them by their parents who are under the sway of the snake handlers for they will have been reduced to borderline retarded drones who advocate fascism and renounce science while having to view history through a kaleidoscope due to the regressive home schooling that they have received due to the movement’s pathological hatred and shunning of public education.

This is exactly why they will go hook, line and sinker for the poison bait of the latest and greatest Joseph Goebbels style television extravaganza called Darwin’s Deadly Legacy that makes the astounding claim that it was Darwin’s theory of evolution that served as the inspiration for the demonic monster Adolph Hitler and effectively served as the blueprint for the Holocaust. This turgid, fallacious piece of folderol was delivered from on high to the masses over the weekend (and also available on DVD or book for any of the semi-literate miscreants who have been weaned on Timothy LaHaye’s pulp fiction trash) via the Coral Ridge Ministries high-tech electronic pulpit featuring frothing Christian Reconstruction honcho and resident lunatic Dr. James Kennedy who has long been training and mobilizing his forces for an overthrow of the existing United States government to install a theocratic new order.

To promote this leap of revisionist history and logic and to apply it to further eroding faith in the real Christ Kennedy has even retained the services of that Godless whore herself: Ann Coulter. She who is the object of depraved sexual fantasies to millions of frustrated white male losers despite looking more like a haggard, horse-faced, crack whore (at least to me) will appear in Darwin’s Deadly Legacy which is being heavily promoted in the sinister realms of the alternative phony Christian media where she can denounce liberals until her head begins to spin in circles and produce torrents of pea soup green colored vomit. Kennedy, his evil ministry and their Republican servants in the Rove propaganda shop are definitely hoping for the crossover appeal that the appearance of the demented harlot of hatred will generate.

And while I am on the subject of screeching harpies it was at the same viper filled snakepit of the Coral Ridge Ministries’ high profile Reclaiming America for Christ orgy of intolerance where none other than the American Jezebel Katherine Harris attempted to drum up support for her flagging Senate campaign back before it became such an embarassing lost cause unless she can engineer another stolen election come November. Now she has gone totally off the deep end in her shameful pandering to the knuckle dragging regressives as is evident in her recent comments that the separation of church and state was “a lie”. Religion, much like patriotism is certainly the last refuge of scoundrels and Harris upping of her demagoguery in an attempt to pander to the same segment of rubber fetus waving, foam decalogue totin’, rapture watching parasites who leeched onto Terri Schiavo reeks of desperation as much as it reeks of the pungeant scent of the horseshit in the stables on the animal deck of Noah’s Ark.

The theocrats have had a colossal bug up their asses ever since the junk science of Intelligent Design was exposed as the Trojan Horse for good old fashioned fire and brimstone style creationism that it truly is. These bible thumping, Jesus juicing yahoos never have been able to get over that day eight decades and change ago when Clarence Darrow made a mockery out of William Jennings Bryan in a Tennessee court of law and exposed the superstitions of simpletons as so much drivel. The great columnist H.L. Mencken wrote extensively on the trial and I would strongly recommend his classic stories on this historic period that are available at this website. The spineless media would never allow for a Mencken today or for that matter any outspoken individualist voice that would dare speak out against a vicious bloc of activist consumers whose massive, well financed organization and their bloodthirsty relish in bringing down the economic terrorism of targeted boycotts and individualized harassment allow it to continue to conspire largely in secrecy.

“What was behind that consuming hatred? At first I thought that it was mere evangelical passion. Evangelical Christianity, as everybody knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love” 

 

And that is a great albeit very short analysis by a die hard skeptic, a journalistic giant and a man whose eloquent cynicism is sadly missing in these darkest of all times. And what truly is behind that all consuming hatred that burns as incandescently hot as a funeral pyre for post-Enlightenment society?

Present day fundamentalist political movement based ‘Christianity’ is a virulent strain of social virus, determined to infect every organ within the body politic and the power brokers who are behind this movement have made an astonishing amount of progress in laying out and executing a very well planned and financed agenda. It is an agenda that has been enormously successful due to their ability to work with other groups with seemingly conflicting interests that are able to assist the theocrats in bringing about their ultimate goals:

Military Industrial Complex War Profiteers: The ability to bring about the war that is necessary to kick off Armageddon as well as the crusade to ‘Christianize’ the globe while waging endless against Muslims and Islam. It keeps arms shipments flowing and defense industry stocks up (not to mention corrupt members of Congress in office) and the trading of money for blood is as institutionalized and entrenched as it has ever been. The GWOT makes for very, very good business.

The Israeli Lobby: Christian Zionists need partners in their quest to unify the Holy Land in preparation for the return of Christ, never mind that in order to fulfill their fever dream prophecy that the Jews will have to either convert or die. This symbiotic relationship is tolerated and even encouraged by many hard core Israelis and their domestic agents who wish to gain sufficient regional dominance and ‘Liebensraum’ by using American as a Golem with which to smite Iran and Syria.

The Neo Cons: For their staunch support of the state of Israel over the best interests of the USA as well as their ability to influence foreign policy to fulfill the goals of crusade and war. CUFI (Christians United For Israel) and the crazed Pastor John Hagee who is the author of ‘The Jerusalem Countdown’ and who is outspoken in his intent to work to bring about a conflagration that will jump start the apocalypse has been a very useful tool for the neocons and hard core Christian Zionists as he organizes and leads the cheering for what would be a catastrophic escalation of violence in an attack on Iran.

Wall Street Uber-Capitalists: Despite all of the rhetoric of Christ being king even God himself knows that in this society that the true king is cash. The ability of the megachurches to mobilize voters keeps politicians friendly to corporatism in office.

The Wealthy Elite: As with the looters of Wall Street these people benefit financially from having a savage, Social Darwinist, tax slashing beast of a government in power. Many may have hold their nose while supporting the theocrats but as the saying goes “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and the enemy is progressive government and liberal society. To the elites who tolerate these people so as to personally profit I offer one word of advice and that is simply beware. Beware because when you stoke the fires of hatred in others and nurture their ignorance so as to gain you are only empowering those who one day will become powerful enough to turn on you as well. The ignorance of the red state evangelical movement only ensures one thing, that on the day that your common enemy is neutralized and YOU become the next enemy there will be no reasoning with the hordes that will be laying siege to your gated communities.

Through mutually beneficial alliances the ideologues have been able to build a coalition that has effectively seized control of the American political system. The rise in power of the theocrats has coincided with the spread of neo-liberal, Social Darwinist ‘free-market’ capitalism that exploits the most poverty-stricken countries of the third world, the same impoverished and downtrodden masses that Christ himself championed. The ascension to the pinnacle of power of the American ayatollahs and their armies of converts has not surprisingly coincided with the rise of the empire of satellite television and the ability to mass disseminate propaganda in their alleged mission to spread the message of Christ. This wonder working power has instead been used to not only transform the message to be more capitalist friendly by eliminating the emphasis of all of that bothersome stuff about ministering to the poor and downtrodden but to co-opt Jesus as a brand name for theocratic moneychangers. You see, in post-Reagan, Bushist America they are the ones who have run his longhaired liberal ass out of the temple.

The electronic pulpit and the application of sophisticated business marketing techniques to Christianity has allowed the cash spigot to be opened with millions of television viewers being implored to give and give generously to the of the temples of the modern Sadducees and Pharisees who were all to willing to at least partly forsake the gospels of Christ for the gospels of the money changers like the Wall Street Journal, the Gideon’s trumpet of the ruinous globalist economics that are so devastating to the hopes of billions but as the Roman Catholic church has repeatedly proven through history any attrocity no matter how heinous or cruel can be justified if it is rubber stamped by the almighty.

The Republican party has been particularly successful in using religion to its advantage by gene splicing it with southern hostility, fear and outright bigotry. There are those who actually have been led to believe that George W. Bush is God’s man in the White House and the votes of thousands of blacks that put him in office magically disappeared through a divine miracle. The RNC and Karl Rove have so effictively used this to ensure one party rule for the long term future that irreversible damage to the system is imminent. The monster that the Rove led subliminal message machine has midwifed is growing stronger and straining against it’s bonds, all of the phony and carefully constructed speeches laced with religious references that would escape the cognitive abilities of the unindoctrinated have hit home with their intended audience and they are growing stronger by the day. With all monsters they also become more venomous, militant and willing to do whatever it takes to prepare for the rapture and kingdom come, the biggest lie they say that the devil ever told is that he didn’t exist but that whopper is topped by the lie that our domestic ‘Christian’ extremism is any different than the militant Islamic extremism that resulted in 9/11 and never ending war.

Here is a quote from the highly influential Republican radical cleric Pat Robertson:

“It is interesting, that termites don’t build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds. The people who have come into (our) institutions (today) are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have…. The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation.”

 

If you believe that this is nothing other than bombastic rhetoric on my part then I would highly suggest that you take a good look at their ideology as espoused in writings, radio programs and rains down from the pulpits their flag-draped megachurches and the filth that emanates from the Coral Ridge Ministries is a damned good place to start. Just as ‘Intelligent Design’ has lost some degree of credence of late this very dangerous piece of propaganda is nothing more but the same re launching of a failed product with new packaging and slick public relations. This is the proven formula in a land of mindless consumerism ruled by cheesemongers and mean spirited fanatics.

Creationism wrapped in Nazism should be a perfect bookend to the anti-Semitism that is so often pinned on Iran as justification for the escalation of the war and the rallying of support for a deluge of fire from the skies above Tehran to kick off the Armageddon that is so lusted and hungered for by so many.

Republicans Vs. Jesus

“He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone..”

Jesus Christ

Quite possibly the only thing on the planet that is more gut-wrenchingly nauseating than seeing an endless parade of Republican chickenhawks painting their fucking fingers purple, wrapping themselves in the flag and braying their approval for sending poor bastards off to die ostensibly in the service of their country in a foreign land (while most of those gutless scum ever even bothered to wear the uniform themselves) it is their sheer blasphemy and callous disregard for exploiting Jesus Christ himself to mount their jihadist terrorist assault on the United States of America. The idiots in Congress are only the standard bearers for those who are the far more nefarious puppeteers behind the movement to replace democracy with theocracy.

The Republican party and the religous zealots who effectively control it have hijacked the Christian religion and have transformed Jesus Christ into a ‘new and improved’ product that can be sold to the flocks of consumers who regularly pack their goat barns or as they are more commonly known, their mega-churches. This label comes from the biblical parable puts it that Jesus will divide his sheep from the goats amongst them, he also dispenses some very good wisdom about prayer:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say to you that they have their reward.”

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly”


That’s Matthew: 6, Verses 5 and 6 by the way, look it up. I am not exactly a biblical scholar or theologian but it seems to me that Christ is alluding to the fact that it is not exactly necessary to run down and join your neighborhood mega-church in order to curry favor with God, you can actually save a bit of coin on the gas and retreat to your own cramped closet at home to offer up prayers. I know that the militant fundamentalist ‘Christians’ have this connotation that closets somehow are equated with homosexuality which according to their radical clerics must be eradicated but it just seems to me that Jesus is actually calling out those who gather in temples of worship to be seen is a form of hypocrisy. It’s a shame that the true teachings of Jesus Christ the prophet, liberal and he who preached compassion towards the downtrodden is so often eschewed in favor of the vengeful, materialistic, warmongering character that the fanatics of the Religious Right have transformed him into for their own benefit. I mean when was the last time that James Dobson, Timothy LaHaye, Jerry Falwell or for that matter George W. Bush took the time to wash the feet of a poor man?

GOP Jesus, the gay-hating, free-market preaching, Social Darwinist avenger who now pilots a fighter jet because his more traditional donkey was unable to carry enough incendiary devices or precision guided bombs to drop on brown skinned children rules the mega-churches. He is a staunchly pro-American warrior and those who proudly display their little yellow ‘support the troops’ ribbon magnets on their gas guzzlers as a tribute to GOP Jesus are legion, hell I even saw a sticker the other day with an angry looking Christ with blazing eyes and a broadsword, what in the fuck ever happened to “blessed are the peacemakers”? Probably the same thing that happened to the blessed meek who were to inherit the Earth, the dogma of GOP Jesus is summed up by the harlot of hate Ann Coulter who once said: “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours”.

GOP Jesus also disdains the causes and care of the poor and downtrodden who were the biggest concern for Jesus Christ for the praise of the wealthy who delight in the accumulation of earthly treasures which are all the better to show how successful and blessed by God that they are to their fellow ‘goat barn’ members. Earthly possessions are not a burden to holiness as Christ seemed to indicate when he said in the book of Matthew (3:19-3:21):

Lay not up yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The religious right instead has a far more Calvinist style view in that God bestows favoritism through materialism, this meshes very nicely with capitalism and it’s no wonder why the GOP’s holy warriors who serve as the palace guards for the elite who remain cloistered in their gated communities and Wall Street ivory towers have such a cozy, symbiotic relationship.

The coming holy war leading up to the November elections will be viciously fought and no quarter will be given, not with the providence of the Bush kingom of God on the line, Israel on the attack and the Middle East aflame, the rapture clock is nearing the long awaited moment. No, there is too much at stake now to not use the goat barns as garrisons for the soldiers of the army of GOP Jesus.

I can practically hear the shrillness of cornered animal Karl Rove desperately barking orders:

“Mobilize the Base! I want the abortion clinics and gay bars stormed, I want to see rubber fetuses on pitchforks, what the fuck is wrong with you people…don’t you understand what is at stake here?”

When it is all coming apart there is nothing like whipping up the masses of ignorant activist thugs with plenty of free time on their hands. These are the ones who comprise the standing army of the party base of the legions of hate. Millions of venom spewing, poisonous, regressive little toads who have been duped by megalomaniac televangelists and sleazy political operatives into supporting a party that conscripts them into a war against a phantom enemy and forces them to sell their souls as well as the very future of their children in order to wage total jihad for a cause that is the very antithesis of what Jesus Christ actually stood for.

The moral rot and corruption of the Republican party is anything but a just cause and it’s message much like Hitler’s proclamation of ‘Got Mit Uns’ distorts religion in order to pander to the basest of the evils and fears of humanity so as to allow them to justify anything in the name of what they have been fraudulently sold as the will of God.

The rise of the radical religious right in America and it’s takeover of the Republican party has a been the equivalent of watching a trainwreck in slow motion, unable to avert your eyes from the horrible scene.
The majority of our population of sheeple go about their daily lives while completely oblivious to the growing danger of the increasingly malignant cancer of radicalized fundamentalist religion that continues to metastasize through the body of secular, democratic society. The media being the craven corporate monolith that it is remains firmly in the corner of the administration, the neocons and the theocratic jihadists, fearful of any legislation favorable of monopoly being stalled or of any further deregulatory standards that would impede their profits being derailed. The media is also terrified of the sort of mass, well organized boycotts against their sponsors that would result in a loss of profits so they won’t touch the menace posed ty the theocrats with a two hundred foot long pole. The bastardized nature of their illicit union with the sad remnants of what was once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt is as shameful as it is unholy.

And how preposterous it is for one of the world’s major religions to proclaim a mandate of superiority at the expense of others, to preach to the ignorant the gospel of providence. Does it not occur to the pathetic wretches that no one, person or religion has exclusive rights to God? The evangelical Christian movement in America uses good old fashioned jingoism and nationalism to reinforce their message of theocracy and exclusion, of hate and illusion. Christ warned about the danger of following false prophets who would be as goats among sheep as well as the ultimate fate of trees that bear bitter fruit but this does not hinder a movement indoctrinated to a particular militant translation of the gospel and scriptures

Then again, this movement is not about God, it is not about morality, it is not about Christ, it is about raw institutional power, to ever believe anything else is foolishness. A good look at the Texas Republican Party platform is a glimpse at the Mein Kampf of our modern times. It is a playbook that Karl Rove will be using almost exclusively in the coming days as he launches a scorched earth campaign to distract and deceive and chart a course out of the wilderness for the unholy administration of emperor Bush and his besieged minions. Make no mistake, these people are the enemy within and are determined to overthrow the legitimate government, re-write the constitution through legislative terrorism and judicial fanaticism and enforce their cruel extremism on all who are not members of the cult.

Rove is now massing his army for an all out assault and the hell with whatever the damage ultimately may be, then again when in the hell have the America haters on the extremist right ever cared?

Were Christ to return to earth tomorrow he would be decried as a treasonous liberal by the GOP state controlled media, would be denounced as a long haired, anti-American peacenik who supports the terrorists, hates freedom, is a commie and is unpatriotic. Then after the electronic crucifixion would be arrested as an enemy combataant and would be just another Middle-Eastern man in an orange jumpsuit locked up in a tiny cell in Gitmo.

You see, GOP Jesus and today’s Pharisees and moneychangers have successfully chased Jesus of Nazareth’s ass out of the temple and he sure as hell ain’t ever coming back as long as they have anything to say about it.

“We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”

-Karl Rove