Enough, already.

This was a very bad way to begin the day:

http://www.alternet.org/rights/129920/

Is Obama Bringing Too Much Religion into the White House?
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted March 5, 2009.

Our new President is trying my patience. As Obamaphoria has subsided somewhat and the celebratory smoke has cleared, as the clouds of bliss have wafted away and some of the ugliness of life’s realities have made themselves apparent, I am finding myself gasping for breath, as one disappointing revelation follows another. Getting smacked in the face with this headline, even before my obligatory coffee, so early this morning, is really pushing the edge of the envelope.

Firstly I am offended by the ghastly apparition of the Geithner/Summers series of economic brain farts. The worst part of these is not that they smell bad; they just don’t smell at all. Geithner needs to PLEASE go back from whence he came and calmer, more capable heads need to be brought to bear upon the travails at hand. I’m not terribly happy, either, with the strong hints that we may carry forward some torture practices around the world of our nefarious prisons and detention centers. And on March 4, the President single-handedly declared war on the wasteful spending of the military industrial complex. Optimism and progressive thinking is one thing, but naiveté’ and sticking your head into the mouth of a hungry lion without a safety net is something else. At the end of the classic movie, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, the two hapless heroes prepare to rush out into the courtyard and attempt an escape...against impossible odds. Obama (Butch) is in this one all alone (Joe Biden is no Sundance), like the Lone Ranger, and he has absolutely no idea how many Mexican/Indian/corporate armament-building moguls are perched with guns outside on the wall. Once again, while I can applaud forward thinking, I do not have much time to watch a poorly planned suicide. He is supposed to be more clever than that.

But this morning’s religious news threatens my total exasperation. In the first place, the United States was NEVER intended to be a Christian nation. The founding fathers fought and wrote and argued against that condition from the very onset of our fledgling nation. In one misguided step and after another, over a period of 200+ years, there have been moves afoot to impose, insert and infect American society and government with “Christian” inspired beliefs, mores and practices. Enough, already. I really had hoped that this ongoing use of the infiltration and poisoning of independent secular humanity with saccharine religiosity had reached its zenith during the Bush II administration, but the monster seems far from dead. This Alternet article would seem to indicate that we should brace for another round of government-religious foppery.
“Jesusology”, and its many offshoots and perversions (including those theistic step-children under the umbrella of AIPAC and modern Jewish militarism), have attempted, over the years, to either infiltrate, color, shade or camouflage the basic inter-dependent relationships between men and women in our society. They seek to lay claim to innocence for complicity in the world’s genocidal horrors, starvations, racial inequities and assorted hatreds, by simply invoking the word “God”. I have simply had it.

We have “In God We Trust” plastered all over government buildings, seals, coins and documents, inserted “under God” into the pledge of allegiance (which we periodically attempt to eliminate and regularly ignore), waste time and money arguing for and against placement of the twelve commandments and nativity scenes in public places, both take out of context and misquote “Christian” writings and utilize misappropriation of “Christian” beliefs to impugn, harass and discriminate against people of color, Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians, occasionally Jews on the wrong side of the political fence, and atheists and secularists, as well. Our “assumed”, God-given religious supremacy has warped most of our day-to-day perceptions of our fellows, their essential needs and how we choose to proceed or falter.

And Now Barack Obama wants to attend prayer breakfasts, make promises and continue to misuse, abuse and mal-manage monies associated with “faith-based” programs and initiatives. To invoke (God forgive me) Newt Gingrinch, “Does he think we are stupid?”
Apparently so. The religious right (if they have taken the time to read and pay any attention) should have discovered by now that George W. pandered to them for their votes, created a White House office for faith-based affairs, and then made sure it did nothing and remained unfunded. It created, propagated and sustained a belief that anything that was deemed “faith-based” was good, wholesome, Christian (not “Christ-like”) and somehow more beneficial than any other form of social intercession into poverty, racial hatred, social injustice or matters related to sex education or gender equality. For the record, I think that it is possible to have “faith” in the basic goodness of our fellow man and to make efforts to attend to his or her needs without having to make the special efforts to tie it to Jesus-oriented, guilt-ridden sympathies related to the misfortune of Jews or any other racial, ethnic or religious group that has fallen victim to holocausts, inquisitions or other forms of persecution. At least the lions on the Roman coliseum were non-discriminatory about who they devoured and decimated. We, however, by designating a program as “faith-based”, use our cultural ethos and its appropriated arrogance to name names and be particular about whom we single out to “help”(or not to), in order to symbolically wash away our sins of neglect, economic isolation, discrimination and social and gender estrangement.

I can (somewhat) excuse Rick Warren’s empty rhetoric. I can figure out a way to ignore and laugh at the likes of Rev. Wright. Hell, I’ve been tolerating Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for as long as I can remember. And despite the clamor to the contrary, Billy Graham is not and never has been the protestant Pope of the United States. This is all religious foolishness, used to offer distractions and divergences to Americans, used as sideshow entertainments and emotional panaceas to soothe and calm the American confused and somewhat schizophrenic humanitarian psyche.

When all else fails, it seems the best we can do is to throw logic to the wind, fall on our knees and pray, and hope the God we are praying to is the one most sympathetic to our plight. If we are really lucky, he/she/it will really get down on that lazy, feckless, faithless guy next door that we detest for his faithlessness. We are, after all, “faith-based” in our motivations and actions, and so very much better than he/she is. Perhaps we should contact the Center for Disease Control and see if they can find a vaccine for jesus-based infestations and faux good will. Perhaps addressing this ailment should be a new element of our universal healthcare. Perhaps we could wake up and smell the coffee and stop proliferating crucifixes.

And I think we should start collecting taxes on Church properties. Think what that would do for local budgets. I’ll bet I’ve really pissed of a bunch of folks, with this one. I need more coffee.