I promise I will once again blog about my creative efforts and cocktails and the labyrinth soon, but there’s just so much crazy out there clamoring for our attention.

Today’s crazy is a quote from a Baptist preacher in Nashville:

“We have to do something quickly, because there’s a cliff ahead of us, a civilization, and it’s within sight,” said Lydon Allen, a pastor at the Woodmont Bible Church in Nashville.
(Read more at http://wonkette.com/598063/god-turns-his-back-on-gay-hatin-tennessee-lawmakers#XHSlVK4E41COLxer.99)

This pitiful bleat is in reference to the Tennessee legislature’s failure to pass a bill nullifying the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality.  (I know, right?)

It’s not actually coherent, but we’re going to give the poor man the benefit of the doubt because his meaning is plain: we have limited time to repent of our Somdomite^[1] ways before we… Well, the country will… Um…

Okay, his meaning isn’t clear either.

Here’s what I don’t get about these apocalyptic warnings: they don’t actually mean anything.  None of it rises above Revelation-of-John style “beasts with nine heads” or “scarlet woman” ravings.  Sure, it’s scary, but what precisely are they telling us is going to happen if we don’t straighten up (!) and fly right (!!)?

There’s a cliff ahead of us?  Right ahead of us?  What does that mean in practical terms?  If we were talking about investing in new infrastructure projects, we could argue back and forth with numbers and data and historical precedent and facts so we could arrive at a decision on whether or not we need to keep the bridges from falling down.  But a “cliff”?  How are we supposed to make rational decisions about that?

The answer is, of course, that we’re not, at least not for these poor people who keep making these prophecies.  It’s all lizard-brain fear, all of it, and that’s enough for them and their followers.

But just once, I’d like someone to ask Rev. Allen, “What do you mean?  What, exactly, is going to happen if we don’t go back to stomping on gay people?  Names, Travis, I need names.”

I want a list of specific events, with a timeline, and then check in—very, very publicly—on the timeline to see if any of the terrible things have come to pass.  None of them will have come to pass, of course, not that it will matter to the End Times crowd, but I want these people marginalized and ridiculed back into their caves where we don’t have to pretend they mean anything to our society.

Thank you for listening.

—————

^[1] [sic]^[2]

^[2] cf.

Some old friends are apparently avid supporters of Ben Carson’s candidacy for the presidency. They are devout, conservative Christians, perfectly nice people, but who clearly have a blind spot where this man is concerned. As far as I can tell, they want us to vote for him because he’s a virtuous man who can “bring this country back to God.”

I have some questions for them.

What does that mean, “bring this country back to God”? What kinds of policies do you expect him to enact in order to do that? How would those policies square with the pluralistic country we live in? Or would that become United States policy, to privilege Christianity over other faiths (or non-faith)?

Is the God you hope he will bring the country back to the God he worships as a Pentecostal? Or is there some other mutually agreed upon version you’re hoping for? Do you understand that there are different versions of even the Christian God in this country? Do you understand that there are versions of God that lie outside what you consider the “Judeo-Christian tradiiton”?^[1]

Do you think that if we elect a devout Christian to the office that the nation’s problems will resolve themselves? Do you think that a Congress would naturally fall in line with this person’s policies?  Or will God simply intervene in our affairs?

What do you think Ben Carson’s policies actually are? How much do you understand about his take on the issues.^[2] Is it possible that his understanding of some of these could be simplistic and based on erroneous information, or worse, magical thinking? Are the issues he lists enough to run a country, or are there other problems facing this nation which he does not address? How important are those problems?

Do you think that “bringing the country back to God” is the President’s job? Do you think that if we elect a devout man to the office that God’s protection will return to the United States? What do you mean by the phrase “God’s protection”? Is this different from sports figures thanking God for their victory?^[3]

What, exactly, is it that you hope that will change about our country through divine intervention? Have you considered that your vision of a virtuous life and a virtuous nation might not be universal, i.e., that others have different ideas about what is virtuous and godly? Have you considered that these changes might be unwelcome in other people’s lives? How will that work absent change in legislation and policy?

Have you been praying for this country to achieve the results you hope Ben Carson will effect if elected? Has your church? How long have you been doing so?^[4] If so, then why do you think those results haven’t already occurred? What do you think God has been telling you all this time in response to your prayers?

——————
^[1] Do you understand that when you say “Judeo-Christian,” everything you associate with that term indicates that you actually mean “Christian”?

^[2] Have you compared his issues page to other candidates? Trump’s? Sanders’? Clinton’s?  Does his list of issues seem more or less comprehensive to you than the others?

^[3] Have you read Mark Twain’s War Prayer?

^[4] Has it been since Jan 20, 2009? Why is that, do you think?

No one has ever accused the Tea Party of being intellectual giants. In fact, most of them would deny the accusation themselves.

But David Brat, the rabid weasel who ran against and defeated rabid weasel Eric Cantor because—incredibly—Cantor was not rabid-weaselly enough for Virginia voters, has set a new standard. After President Obama’s State of the Union address, Brat took to the airwaves to object:

“He’s using the Christian tradition and trying to bring about compassion by bonking Republicans over the head with the Bible,” Brat said. “It’s almost a comedy routine on what compassion and love is. He’s mocking his enemies in order to compel a larger federal state using the tradition of love.”

“Our side, the conservative side, needs to reeducate its people that we own the entire tradition,” Brat said. “If you lose the moral argument, you lose the policy argument every time, so we need to reclaim the moral argument, where we’re so strong.”

(full story here)

To which the world replied:

I mean… It’s just that…

I can’t even.

I have to vent.

On Facebook this morning, a now-unfriended person paste-posted an image of what looks like a newspaper article outlining the deeply nefarious “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky.  Even if I hadn’t read “Rules”—which I have—this artifact didn’t pass the too-outrageous-to-be-true test.

So I commented that it wasn’t true, linking to the Wikipedia article on “Rules” and the Snopes article debunking the artifact.  (I also uploaded the graphic to the left; this is now my standard response to these idiocies.)

Another commenter then commented on the original, “Good to know, may I repost?” AFTER I HAD ALREADY DEBUNKED IT—but this is not my first time observing a rightwing nutjob’s blindness to the facts right in front of him.

Here’s why I’m seething: the next time this exchange percolated through my newsfeed, the original poster HAD DELETED ALL MY LINKS, leaving only my comment that it wasn’t true. He then commented, “To all my liberal friends—gotcha!”

WTF, dude.  “Gotcha?”  You posted a lie, I discredited it as a lie, and you have concealed that.  You have not deleted the post, you have not acknowledged that you slipped up and allowed your rabid weasel-brain to get the better of you, you have deliberately spread a lie as the truth.  Son of a bitch.

This person—it almost goes without saying—a fine, upstanding Christian in this town.

As the article says, “The Useful Idiots have destroyed every nation in which they have seized power and control.  It is presently happening at an alarming rate in the U.S.”

So this was on a friend’s feed today on Facebook:

I have a thought experiment here.  Let’s say that you go out on the playground and there’s this one kid who has a stick and he’s whacking the other kids in the face.

1. Do you

a) bemoan the lack of discipline in his home
b) take the stick away from him

2. Do you

a) take everyone back to class and ask them to bow their heads
b) take the stick away from him

3. Do you

a) give the other kids sticks and tell them to whack him in the face too
b) take the stick away from him

Such a dilemma, isn’t it?