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...