A Defense of the Reverend Fred Phelps (sort of)…

In a blast-furnace hot ruling on Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church preserving their right to hold ugly protests at military funerals. The church (a Satanic den of iniquity and ignorance in my opinion) is headed by the infamous Reverend Fred Phelps who rocketed to stardom and adulation on the fascist Religious Right for his original protesting of the funerals of dead homosexuals, notably victims of AIDS. Phelps, a real piece of work, a fire-breathing demagogue of the highest order who once referred to our star-spangled, armed to the teeth and massively dysfunctional lemming colony as “a sodomite nation of flag-worshipping idolators”, a former civil rights attorney and a Democrat for God’s sake revels in the contempt hurled at him and his church. The ruling by an 8-1 margin that not included three of the four RATS (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia) but the so-called moderates must feel like a sucker punch to weepy, self-centered liberals and their holy crusade to institutionalize gay marriage throughout the land rather than focus their activism on more important matters, say stopping the fascist police state, ending the wars or throwing the Wall Street pigs who destroyed the economy into a Supermax prison. The one dissenting opinion, rendered by the newest RAT Samuel Alito, the little twerp whose public display of disrespect at Obama’s 2010 state of the union address earned the scorn of the victorious Phelps who commented:

“The only surprise is that Justice Alito did not feel compelled to follow his oath…. We read the law. We follow the law. The only way for a different ruling is to shred the First Amendment.”

Now let me be clear on one thing, free speech issues aside, Phelps and his rancid rat pack of psychotic thugs are the scum of the earth, were there anyone with any decency or balls left in America they would go old school on the whole bunch of them the next time that they show up waving their silly signs. What they represent is reprehensible, hateful, a distrotion of anything preached by Jesus Christ (this puts him in good company with the thousands of other charlatans posing as preachers to spew their hateful bile) and a publicity seeking monster who resembles a fat toad in a cowboy hat. The man is a reprobate, a moral degenerate and a menace to society but as long as the smoking ruins of what used to be America still maintains some sort of watered down pretense of being a constitutional republic he and his droogs are at least theoretically entitled to the right of free speech. The political correctness Nazis must be grinding their pointy little teet down into nubs today over this ruling but as is typical they are incapable of grasping onto larger issues that venture outside their little bubble worlds where dueling identity based groups jockey for preferential positioning to attempt to force the state to bestow special protections to sate their own selfish needs for attention. The SCOTUS ruling in Snyder v. Phelps protecting the protests of military funerals by Westboro Baptist is far more than the simplified sanctioning of anti-gay hate speech, it is a blow to the glorification of American militarism that has thoroughly corrupted and poisoned society since before the last shot was fired in WW II.

Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church really weren’t seen in much of a threatening light as long as they stuck to harassing the friends and relatives at the funerals of gay people, that was just fine with the status quo. It wasn’t until Phelps escalated and started dragging his bund of freaks to the funerals of our blessed heroes who were slaughtered for our freedoms (GAG) in the never-ending corporate wars that he became a threat. You see, hectoring gays and toting rainbow colored signs proclaiming that “God Hates Fags” serve the interests of the system, especially when that system, in this case, the Bush administration’s neocon agenda to conquer the planet and damn the consequences. Hell, were it not for the calculating and cynical gay baiting of Karl Rove (who according to some seedy internet rumors likes to swallow the pork sword on occasion himself) and the manipulation of the fucked over, embittered slugs of the Religious right to even get Bush into office (with a big assist from the SCOTUS and brother Jeb of course) in the first place a guy like Phelps, were he not so gauche would have normally have been honored with a White House visit and a night in the Lincoln bedroom. Now when Westboro Baptist wasn’t getting enough attention for their crazed, hate-fueled superstitions they started showing up when our hallowed little green army men were being planted with signs like “Thank God for 9/11”, “God Hates America”, “Thank God For Dead Soldiers” and other similar slogans it was just too much for Bush and Cheney’s bloodthirsty militarism. In 2006 as the bodies burned in the streets of Iraq, their flesh being piced at by feral dogs the cowards in the U.S. Congress passed the vomit inducing Respect For America’s Fallen Heroes Act which Bush signed into law as a counter to Phelps. No wonder that the Jesus freaks and the hard core right-wing freaks felt so betrayed by Dubya, in typical cynical Republican fashion they used the dumbest of the dumb to gain power and then cast them out like the snakes that they always were. See the ongoing dissing of the useful idiots of the Tea Party for a perfect example of this.

Anyway, it’s not like I am in any way down with the Reverend Phelps and his mob, personally I think that the local authorities should turn the firehoses on the scum and wash them all back into the sewers where they belong, then weld the lids shut to keep them there. What I AM down witih is any sort of serious protest of these ruinous, immoral and illegal fucking wars that have destroyed the country and with an incursion into Libya in the works will only continue to eradicate any sort of meaningful social reforms, not that any of the sheep in Der Homeland really give a fuck though, they are too busy doing the two-minute hate whenever the mug of Charlie Sheen, Public Enemy Numero Uno is flashed upon the screens of the electronic crackpipe.

Basking in their victory, Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church are now boasting of quadrupling their protests of military funerals, Christ knows there will be no shortage of them as corporate wars continue to pay off big time for defense contractors, the blood barters who speculate on death and a once proud and vibrant nation that only produces death and fraudulent financial instruments.

While Phelps and his clan may not the the best spokespeople for the antiwar movement at least they are out there raising some hell and not sitting in front of their televisions and computer monitors sucking their thumbs while the war machine eats America.

Just my two cents over the morning cup o’ joe

EE

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Just a clarification as I have been admonished for not demonizing Phelps and the Westboro Den of Satan.

While Phelps and his minions are not driven by an anti war philosophy but rather one of bigotry and biblical ignorance their actions in protesting and carrying signs  like GOD HATES DEAD SOLDIERS, THANK GOD FOR 9/11 and THANK GOD FOR IEDS and the like to the funerals of U.S. Soldiers who were killed in the corporate wars are representative of a political statement that is decidedly antiwar.

I am fully cognizant of what Phelps represents but in this pathetic and rabidly militaristic country anything that draws attention to an antiwar message is welcome. Phelps is not an ally but neither is the self-righteous and deluded mass of goo that is the American ‘left’.

Shit, were the silly-assed liberals to get it together and start protesting the goddamn wars instead of waging a holy crusade to institutionalize gay marriage (which incidentally I have no problem with other than it is not a top priority) which only serves to fuel the divisiveness that allows the wars, bailouts, violations of civil liberties and raw tyranny to continue then a cheap substitute like the WBC would be overwhelmed and largely ignored.

Sad isn’t it that this is what passes for antiwar protesting, Hell I remember back in 2003-2005 when there WAS an antiwar movement but the conniving Democrats led by Rahm Emanuel splintered it, co-opted easily bamboozled groups and eradicated any mass movement entirely. Nothing was quite so illustrative of the Democrat’s corruption than in first turning on Cindy Sheehan and then turning her into a pariah, choosing instead to manipulate well intentioned but whimsically thinking morons into mobilizing behind idiotic culture war issues instead of the real wars and the class war.

So if Phelps and his clan bring attention to the illegal wars in this way more power to them.

And no matter how rotten that speech may be in theory such speech should be protected.

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.