Hate! In the Name of Love

The stories defy belief. Or even description. In California, they are forcing grade school children to identify their sexuality in the fifth grade, and separating them into two groups; homosexuals and those who need reeducation. If he had been elected, Algore was going to use some book, and even hired the author in advance, and thank Jesus we have a moral and decent man in the White House. Clinton sold nuclear weapons to China on the sly. Atheist liberals are plotting to make it illegal to refer to yourself as a Christian. Hilary Clinton hired young Christian virgin female secretaries upon which she could slake her unnatural lusts. They are putting Christians in concentration camps, right here in America!

If you think that this is the militia shortwave gossip vine, you’re wrong. It’s also not a newsgroup devoted to Art Bell. It’s not the transcript from Ross Perot’s therapy sessions. It’s not even a badly understaffed mental hospital.

It’s Christian radio, and it is one of the biggest on-going hatefests in America today.

A lot of people ask what is going on with the Republican party these days. Why did it switch from moderate conservative to loony-toons right-wing?

The right-wing came from big money. Ultra-conservative millionaires like the Wiley Brothers, Richard Scaife, the Hunts. Little people with Big Money who are living in deep angst, ever fearful that socialism might take seed among the filthy, heaving masses of the public, and they might rise up and increase the capital gains tax or something. They are perfect willing to lay out billions to get a government that will exist only to see to their creature comforts, and to an alarming degree, they’ve succeeded.

OK. Fascist governments–the only type the wealthy can envision keeping the working class in line–are repressive, reactionary, and inevitably decay into corruption, and we’re well on our way to becoming the next south American banana republic.

But to find out why the Republican party apparently also went insane at the same time, you have to look to the self-styled "Christian right". (Jerry, Pat, Moon: I know Christians. I’ve worked with Christians. And you guys are not Christians). This is where the wyld things live. This is the land of the certifiable, the bible-pounding crackpots and jeezus-wheezers who give Christianity a bad name.

The fat-cat branch of the party, which is growing increasingly uncomfortable with their spear carriers, are largely to blame for the ascendancy of this social malignancy in the body politic. They sent their flacks in to show the basement church brigade how to organize, how to run for grass-roots office, how to be an unrelenting presence in the ongoing democratic debate.

If some of the fat cats wondered at what sort of creatures might be released by this process, they doubtlessly assured themselves that this type of religionist was just the same as some of the fellows at the country club who attend church every week, even if their wives don’t nag them into it.

They aren’t. They are paranoid, fearful, cultish, and despise freedom and liberty as being heretical, secular, ungodly.

They combine the worst that religion has to offer with the worst that politics has to offer. With the result that you end up with a group that is rigid, bigoted, intolerant, incapable of introspection or negotiation, and utterly intent on rewriting America’s past, present and future to fit in the poisonous confines of their own little Eden.

They’ve already infected the culture with their insatiable need to punish and torment. We have more people in jail than the top five "police states" combined, including China. Many are in jail for activities that aren’t even considered crimes in more rational lands, like being mentally ill. Our sentencing structure has become insane, with people getting twenty-five years to life for crimes that might get you six months elsewhere. Parole has become a meaningless term, with the haters of the Christian right screaming that nobody must ever be allowed out on time, and cannot be considered redeemed unless declared so by their preachers. Trials have become mawkish exercises in victim’s soap operas, where anger and outrage against the accused are stoked to the point where the matter of guilt or innocence on the part of the accused is no longer held in any doubt, even without evidence or testimony. And those lucky enough to get out of jails that no longer have determinate sentencing structures find that even though they have served their time and paid the price exacted, they are punished more, stripped of their rights to vote, and often required to identify themselves as parolees before the gimlet and mistrusting eyes of places where they might have hoped to get a new start.

The religiously poisoned need to punish, and punish, and punish. How else can they show they are above sinners unless they punish?

Putsch’s mouthpiece announced yesterday that kids who got busted for drugs must fill out the question "Have you ever been convicted of illegal drug use?" on their college apps; a stunningly hypocritical stance from a man who left that question blank when returning a form for jury duty. Those kids sinned! They must be punished. They didn’t apply for OUR brand of redemption, and so we must continue to punish them!

Some on the religious right revolted against the "faith-based initiative" when they realized that non-Christian religions would be allowed to share the spoils as well as Televangelist Nation.

They’ve managed to convince their puppet President that permitting armed force members coverage to receive Viagra is moral, but providing them with condoms or the pill is not.

The religious right, mad and incapable of introspection, lie without even knowing they lie. Recent claims include the assertion that the Catholic Church SUPPORTED Copernicus in his assertion of the heliocentric model, that Madison wanted a Christian-based nation, and that Jesus would have favored school prayer.

They spend an inordinate amount of time on matters that don’t seem particularly spiritual, such as the budget, flag-burning amendments, campaign finance reform, efforts to dismiss the stolen election and puff the puppet in the White House up into something resembling a real president. They spend a lot of time on politics, and if they sound indistinguishable from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and the Washington Times, it’s because they are merely a different tine on the same fork.

Like all such movements, they have their scapegoat. Gays, or what they like to call "The Homosexual Lifestyle". They constantly rant about how homosexuals are conspiring to take over schools, force children to become homosexuals, infiltrate our entertainment and education, and make everyone cross dress. If it sounds a bit like the rants about Jews that Hitler used to make, rest assured that there is no difference, and if they take over, they will move quickly to solve "the Homosexual Problem", and given their general level of viciousness and cruelty, the methods used will probably be much the same. These people aren’t willing to share their country with gays. They will eliminate the gays. One way or another.

If you aren’t gay, don’t be impatient. Your turn will come. They already see Democrats, seculars and liberals as the opposing force in their silly little good vs. evil world view, and they don’t propose to let evil exist if they can have a say in the matter. What it will boil down to is; join their church, or be exiled, or sent off to the camps. God doesn’t want heathen roving among the faithful, you know, and if you aren’t of "the faithful", you will have no place in society.

Not their society.

The Republican old guard taught these lunatics how to organize, how to infiltrate the political process, how to seize control of the party at the grass roots.

And now the Republican fools who nurtured these lunatics, along with the rest of us, must watch with mounting unease as they campaign to destroy freedom in America – religious freedom, including the freedom not to be religious, and preempt the power of the state to punish and suborn it to their need for a sick and futile morality play.

Tune in to the sick bastards that make up Christian radio in America, and see for yourself. The AM and low FM bands are roiling in seething hatred and bigotry, all thinly disguised as piety and patriotism.

And if you are one of the vast majority of Christians who isn’t a hate filled loon, a question: why aren’t you ashamed of these people?