sky over Beas
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Monday, April 25, 2005
Jesus!
Watched Tim Robbin's amazing "Bob Roberts" last night. It was made back in the early 90's, with the emphasis on the outer limits of social pathologies spawned by Reaganism. At the time is was a frightening but humorous parody...
Not now. I no longer laughed. The film was utterly believable. As they say, reality always trumps fiction, and the depths of grotesque insanity into which U.S. culture/politics is falling have made Robbin's film very troubling to watch.
At about the same time that I was watching "Bob Roberts", tens of millions of "Christians" in the U.S. were watching and listening to a host of christofascist politicians and media figures celebrate "Justice Sunday"...in which so-called "conservatives" lined up to toss stones at the Constitution and the separation of church and state. Lots of foaming at the mouth. More insanity.
How did things get this way? The U.S. has always had a minority current of extreme religious pathology running through its culture...and sometimes into its politics (One nation under God). But the project forged by the Enlightenment-inspired wealthy intellectuals referred to as the "founding fathers" has never been under greater threat of destruction...the christofascists seem like sharks on a feeding frenzy.
Whoever the hell was behind the big-time violence of 9/11 surely knew which button to push. Fear has twisted a large portion of a nation into ugly insanity. I shiver to think what would happen after another such episode.
Meanwhile...an old Nazi-Youth - the head of the Vatican's modern day inquisition, the destroyer of the spring of decency once represented by Liberation Theology, one who has the nerve to equate 60's political movements with potential Nazism - is head of that ridiculous institution.
There's a good word in Spanish for all of this: esperpentico...
Not now. I no longer laughed. The film was utterly believable. As they say, reality always trumps fiction, and the depths of grotesque insanity into which U.S. culture/politics is falling have made Robbin's film very troubling to watch.
At about the same time that I was watching "Bob Roberts", tens of millions of "Christians" in the U.S. were watching and listening to a host of christofascist politicians and media figures celebrate "Justice Sunday"...in which so-called "conservatives" lined up to toss stones at the Constitution and the separation of church and state. Lots of foaming at the mouth. More insanity.
How did things get this way? The U.S. has always had a minority current of extreme religious pathology running through its culture...and sometimes into its politics (One nation under God). But the project forged by the Enlightenment-inspired wealthy intellectuals referred to as the "founding fathers" has never been under greater threat of destruction...the christofascists seem like sharks on a feeding frenzy.
Whoever the hell was behind the big-time violence of 9/11 surely knew which button to push. Fear has twisted a large portion of a nation into ugly insanity. I shiver to think what would happen after another such episode.
Meanwhile...an old Nazi-Youth - the head of the Vatican's modern day inquisition, the destroyer of the spring of decency once represented by Liberation Theology, one who has the nerve to equate 60's political movements with potential Nazism - is head of that ridiculous institution.
There's a good word in Spanish for all of this: esperpentico...
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
An April Morn
I recall reading a line just after last November's elections that made me chuckle. Something along the lines of how the elections had transformed the writer into a right winger, i.e., he hated the working class and had ceased to believe in evolution...
Indeed.
Now I read that it's time for the Christofascists to ideologically cleanse the "liberal-biased" (whatever the hell that is) U.S. universities. Any professor accused of "offending the beliefs" of a student (e.g., not giving equal time to creationism) can be sued in court by that student.
Why not just throw the offending "liberals" into concentration camps (they could be set up around the new oil drilling fields in Alaska)...
Jeez.
Meanwhile, I was thinking about what Spain was like last year at this time. The Islamofascists had done another deed for their skygod by blowing up a bunch of commuter trains...blood and guts just before the general elections. The political party in power at the time, the Partido Popular, erroneously sensing that they could loose support (90% of Spaniards were consistently against Spanish participation in the Iraq war), quickly panicked. They blamed the attacks on the Basque separatist group ETA (a situation which, if true, would have served to increase public support for the PP). Evidence quickly accumulated that this was not the work of ETA, but rather of a group of Islamofascists. However, the PP continued to insist, blindly and emphatically, on the other thesis. They managed to continue in this "massive lying and manipulation of the Spanish people" (as Zapatero, the new president would describe it 6 months later) right up until election day...
An amazing thing happened. Millions of disgusted Spanish voters went to the polls (most of whom were left-leaning, and who hadn't voted in years due to disappointment with the "left" parties), and voted the lying bastards out.
For this act of courage and democratic action, the Spanish people were immediately treated to accusations of bowing to terrorism, cowardice, etc. All of this, of course, from foreign columnists, chickenhawks and other opinion mongers...
And I have to laugh today, thinking about how the terrorists have truly affected elections in this world. They have succeeded in transforming the USA into a population ruled by fear. A population (a goodly percentage, anyway) who voted for the most inept, anti-American administration in history out of fear. Cowardly fear. An adminstration that is cynically making fools of their own voting base...
And they say the Spaniards succumbed to terrorism...
Hay que joderse.
Indeed.
Now I read that it's time for the Christofascists to ideologically cleanse the "liberal-biased" (whatever the hell that is) U.S. universities. Any professor accused of "offending the beliefs" of a student (e.g., not giving equal time to creationism) can be sued in court by that student.
Why not just throw the offending "liberals" into concentration camps (they could be set up around the new oil drilling fields in Alaska)...
Jeez.
Meanwhile, I was thinking about what Spain was like last year at this time. The Islamofascists had done another deed for their skygod by blowing up a bunch of commuter trains...blood and guts just before the general elections. The political party in power at the time, the Partido Popular, erroneously sensing that they could loose support (90% of Spaniards were consistently against Spanish participation in the Iraq war), quickly panicked. They blamed the attacks on the Basque separatist group ETA (a situation which, if true, would have served to increase public support for the PP). Evidence quickly accumulated that this was not the work of ETA, but rather of a group of Islamofascists. However, the PP continued to insist, blindly and emphatically, on the other thesis. They managed to continue in this "massive lying and manipulation of the Spanish people" (as Zapatero, the new president would describe it 6 months later) right up until election day...
An amazing thing happened. Millions of disgusted Spanish voters went to the polls (most of whom were left-leaning, and who hadn't voted in years due to disappointment with the "left" parties), and voted the lying bastards out.
For this act of courage and democratic action, the Spanish people were immediately treated to accusations of bowing to terrorism, cowardice, etc. All of this, of course, from foreign columnists, chickenhawks and other opinion mongers...
And I have to laugh today, thinking about how the terrorists have truly affected elections in this world. They have succeeded in transforming the USA into a population ruled by fear. A population (a goodly percentage, anyway) who voted for the most inept, anti-American administration in history out of fear. Cowardly fear. An adminstration that is cynically making fools of their own voting base...
And they say the Spaniards succumbed to terrorism...
Hay que joderse.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Impossible to watch the news. Nothing but post-canonization of a supposed saint. Helped "free the world of communism". Another hero akin to Reagan. One feels like screaming bloody murder. Indeed. How many millions or hundreds of millions of souls were caused to suffer for the sanctified opinions of this man? How long will those of us who believe in facing reality honestly and with dignity have to bow before the dream merchants, the salesmen of metaphysical tripe? How long must we watch as those around us choke on the fodder, spitting it in our faces when we question the absurdity and hyprocrisy of it all? How long will it be completely acceptable and politically correct to overtly or covertly condemn the worldview of hundreds of millions by insisting we all shall suffer eternally in some fantasy hell?...this, while non-believers are harshly judged for even mildly questioning the stories and foundations squeezed out of the metaphysical madness that abounds.
Hay que joderse.
Hay que joderse.
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