Double Post:: War, Witchcraft and...a Wish

Some thoughts on the United States Being Its Own Worst Enemy

May 26 & 27

Now that all of the Memorial Day platitudes are past, I would like to reflect a little on the sentiments of our country.

Pastor Rod Parsley has said that America was founded to destroy Islam. He has had a hard time proving such nonsense. America never really set out to destroy anything - except itself. Even the immaculate Puritans had more blood on their hands than our self-proclaimed patriots would like to admit: the first settlers engaged in Indian wars very quickly. What's more, they implanted in the minds of following generations the spin that Indians were blood-thirsty heathens, unworthy of the land they occupied. The Puritans had no real notion of sharing the land with anyone else. They allied with tribes to kill other tribes, then killed their allies - all for "God and civilization."

"Americans" were killing Americans.

Then Americans started to kill their own kind in earnest: starting with witchcraft trials. In 1647, Alse Young was the first person to be executed as a witch. She was hanged, not burned (the difference being like "shaken, not stirred"). Besides the Bible admonition "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," Connecticut law depended greatly on Leviticus (20:27) says: A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood (shall be) upon them. In Connecticut, witchcraft was last listed as a capital crime in 1715. The crime of witchcraft disappeared from the list of capital crimes when the laws were next issued in 1750. (Wikipedia)


Then the pinnacle of self destruction came in the form of the Salem Witchcraft Trials. These were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex Counties of colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused who were not formally pursued by the authorities. The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged. One man who refused to enter a plea was crushed to death under heavy stones in an attempt to force him to do so. At least five more of the accused died in prison.

After the Revolutionary War, the country went back to killing Native Americans on an unprecedented scale and even continued through the Civil War up to the Spanish American War. There were approximately 76 Indian "Wars." And what we didn't do with rifles, we did with "laws" and "Acts", relocating the Native American countless times. There were more "trails of tears" than one would think imaginable.

Side note: I think it quite odd/ironic that Native Americans fought in the 20th (and 21st) century wars. Forgiveness trumped even cultural pride along the way to WWII. Somehow the "heathens" managed to keep their dignity while being oppressed.

Of course the real "Golden Age" of self-loathing was the Civil War and the following Reconstruction. Almost 750,000 men were casualties - more than any other was or military conflict the U.S. has ever engaged in. That should have been, for America, the "War to end all wars."

The Civil War not only pitted Brother against brother, but white against black. The scene to the left is the hanging of a black Union soldier by confederates.

And our self-loathing then began to increase exponentially, with separatist groups sprouting up (e.g. KKK) and laws to punish its own (Southern) states.

You would think that all of this war of Americans against Americans would tire us out for any other wars. Of course, this isn't so. Since 1776, there have been only 90 years in which we were not engaged in either war or military conflict. The sum total casualties may have been milder than some European countries, but one million people is still... well, one million people. We have been involved in several hundred military conflicts.


And we killed our citizens in a variety of other ways than out 'n out war: disaster unpreparedness is perhaps the most recent and vivid means of killing, not to mention poverty. But then again, every country does that to its own citizens. At least, that's our reasoning.

Besides other conflicts, we are now in a "culture war" which, make no mistake, has physical casualties, or hasn't anyone heard of gay bashing?

Then, of course, there's the killing we do through simple economics:

(On Bush's objection to raising the salaries of servicement):

(In Think Progress Blogsite by Faiz, May 23, 2008):

At the same time it is strongly opposing a slight increase in pay for the troops, the Bush administration is asking for hundreds of billions more for war. To put it in all in context, the White House wants $165 billion to continue fighting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this year, but refuses to spend 0.2 percent of that amount ($324 million) to provide the troops a slight pay raise.

Bush on Memorial Day:

"On this Memorial Day, I stand before you as the commander in chief and try to tell you how proud I am," Bush told an audience of military figures, veterans and their families at Arlington National Cemetery. Of the men and women buried in the hallowed cemetery, he said, "They're an awesome bunch of people and the United States is blessed to have such citizens."
With typical ineloquence, President Bush has managed to deflect Americans' attention from the simple fact that Americans have been at war with Americans for centuries.

We've done less fighting to preserve our freedoms from foreign countries than in killing each other.

One wish: to stop our infighting for just one day to see what it feels like.

Scene during the 1891 Expedition in Korea

Witches Graveyard In Salem, MA

Witches Graveyard In Salem, MA
Originally uploaded by Red Dot Studio

A small indication that Americans have warred against themselves most and have had the most casualties. Whether or not war is sanctioned by God (but it most likely is) it is a powerful tool of hatred.

I've always wondered what stance today's Fundamentalists would take if transported back to that era. Can't you imagine people like Hagee, Patsley, Dobson, Perkins, Robertson, Roberts participating in the trials, hangins and burnings of women as witches? If they were around, how many more women would have gone to the stake?

Hagee Couldn't Build Gas Chambers for Jews - How About Homosexuals?

May 23, 2008
Washington Post,
Updated 5:10 p.m.
By Juliet Eilperin and Michelle Boorstein

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today rejected the endorsement of megachurch pastor and ardent Zionist John Hagee after learning of a sermon in which Hagee posited that Nazism was God's will.

Supposedly to get them back to Israel. Yeah, right.

Hagee's exegesis (interpretation) of the Bible is so skewed as to be laughable. The problem with that exegesis (besides pronouncing it) is that this portrays God as an incredibly vengeful monster who cares only that His creations do His will. Another problem is that there are people who (yes) actually believe Hagee. And while Hagee stated that the recording of his statement was taken out of context, his philosophy on the way God works would be taken incorrectly by anyone. In other words they believe what they think Hagee is saying. Their exegesis of Hagee, is Hagee's fault, not theirs. His "flock" doesn't have time to sift through every nuance of his sermons. They want religion/spirituality spelled out for them in the easiest way possible. They come to his show/church to be entertained by what they hear and see, not to think or parse about the subject. Hagee knows that he has to hand them ideas on a silver platter with very few requests to labor over what he says. They have to take whatever Hagee says at face value.

And the face value is ... to get the Jews back to the true Israel, we're gonna have to kill a whole lot of Palestinians, and possibly all of Islam. To make sure that the earth is ready for the second coming, we have to try to make all of earth's inhabitants Christian-pure. That means, for example, no homosexuality.

May 24th is the day that Adolf Mengele took control as chief medical officer at Auschwitz. He experimented on all sorts of people (including homosexuals), but he preferred children - especially twins - and dwarfs. Below is a picture taken of some of his "children."

(From USA Today, AP, 1-28-2005)

At Auschwitz, Mengele was responsible for what came to be known as "selection," choosing who was fit for slave labor and who was to die in the gas chambers. He was also fascinated by twins on whom he experimented.

"He would tell little children to sit on his lap and tell them to call him 'uncle,' 'uncle Mengele' and sometimes give them a sweet — and in the same tone of voice that he said 'I'm uncle Mengele,' he would tell the officials to give them a lethal injection," Martha Weiss, a survivor of his experimental ward, told the Associated Press recently.

Would God WANT that to happen to children? Hagee has a very, very perverted sense of justice, not to mention God.

We are on the brink of an age of genetic engineering. If alive and well today, Mengele no doubt would be in the forefront trying to create the "perfect" man. Hagee probably wonders if homosexuality can be "engineered" out of people before birth. However, since he wants the Second Coming as soon as possible, he might not mind a bit of "sexual orientation cleansing." And when people take him for "the gospel truth," he might wince slightly at the results.

---

What A Great Time To Back To The...20th Century? 19th? 16th?

Removing kids from a house of authoritarianism and hate to a world they weren't allowed comprehend

Hell, we can go back all the way to Biblical Times!

"But King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites... And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart." (KJV, Kings 1, verses 1 & 3)

Yeah, this is another post about the FDLS. Yesterday came the ruling from the appeals court that the State of Texas did not have the right to extract the children of the FLDS from the compound:

By LISA SANDBERG and TERRI LANGFORD
San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle

According to the court, "The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the Department’s witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger."

It stated, "Removing children from their homes on an emergency basis before fully litigating the issue of whether the parents should continue to have custody of the children is an extreme measure."

"The danger must be to the physical health or safety to the child," the appeals court wrote. "The Department (CPS) did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty."

One mother responded: "A great day for the families of Texas"

Huh? I'm sorry, but this is where I differ with a lot of people: The State of Texas was right to withdraw the children. Yes, you heard that right: I'm actually saying that Texas did something right for a change!

I guess I have a different slant: notice that the judge said there was no evidence of physical abuse. But what about emotional abuse? What about false imprisonment? The isolation imposed on these children is nothing else. They have no choice in the matter of estrangement to the rest of the world. Remember: what these kids are taught (and not taught) is a matter of extreme importance in this issue. These kids have been taught that the ENTIRE outside world is evil. Most of them (if not all) have never been outside the compound. They are not allowed to mingle with people, lot allowed to read newspapers, not allowed the internet (and in but rare circumstances) not allowed television. Their perception of the world is so damaged that they can ONLY feel secure within the compound.

Then there is the case of the mothers being imprisoned as well. Polygamy as practiced by the FLDS demands that to get to heaven, every man must have at least three wives. Warren Jeffs (former leader of the FLDS now serving time in prison) had 12 wives! That makes Henry VIII look rather anemic in comparison! Let's face it, to have multiple wives, Henry VIII did it the hard way: successively and individually. That's way too hard on a man's psyche. And was very hard on the wives - even the ones who kept their heads!

Escape, by Carolyn Jessop could be the most accurate account of how prison-like the FLDS is. While I haven't read the book yet, I've read the reviews and all of them give the book the highest rating (5 stars). I've yet to see that for any book. According to Jessop: absolute obedience to husbands is stressed from childhood. Formal education for girls is curtailed in the early teens. Wives have no access to bank accounts. Newspapers are never seen. Access to television is often banned and always monitored.

A relative, Flora Jessop said this about the FLDS's compound in Hildale, UT: "What goes on in that place is nothing less than sexual slavery. At 16, after I rebelled, I was given an alternative: a forced marriage or the mental asylum," she claims. "The local police and judges were in cahoots with the church."

BTW: The name of Jessop is extremely common in the FLDS community. Why? This item from Wikipedia says a lot:

The Colorado City/Hildale, Utah area has the world's highest incidence of fumarase deficiency, an extremely rare genetic condition which causes severe mental retardation. Geneticists attribute this to the prevalence of cousin marriage between descendants of two of the town's founders, Joseph Smith Jessop and John Yates Barlow. At least half of the double community's roughly eight-thousand inhabitants are descended from one or both men.

So, I must comment again: even though there was no evidence of physical abuse, wouldn't rape, false imprisonment and incest as tenets of a "religion" force you to extract these kids as quickly as possible?

Solomon wasn't all that wise.

Solomon Receiving the Queen of Sheba

The Great Society vs Today's ChristoFascism

The remnant of "Camelot" will surely warrant prayers ...
for his swift death - from ChristoFascists.

May 22

It's a rather dull day as religion and politics go. The big news, of course, was the fact that Senator Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. However, neither Pat Robertson nor any of the Christian Right have commented by saying it was God's wrath upon Kennedy's liberal ways. To be fair, we must give them time since comments of that nature take an effort to construct properly. Maybe Robertson is waiting for a natural disaster to strike Kennedy's hospital, who knows. Robertson is, after all, is almost as big on natural disasters as Jerry Falwell was.

I looked at the On This Day in History list and the only thing that struck me was the Lyndon Johnson "Great Society" speech. So, I dug a bit further. Here's the pertinent segment of his speech to the University of Michigan commencement on May 22, 1964:

We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.”

Johnson pushed through legislation for his Great Society which was vaguely modeled on FDR's New Deal. Of his efforts, Medicare, Medicaid still survive, but there were a host of social programs that do not exist anymore. Why not? They were technically killed by Reagonomics, but theoretically they were destroyed by conservatives and, dare we say it - today's ChristoFascists.

The Wikipedia definition of ChristoFascists:

Christofascism allows Christians, or disposes them, to impose themselves upon other religions, upon other cultures, and upon political parties which do not march under the banner of the final, normative, victorious Christ.

Is ChristoFascism a perjorative term? It probably is, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it is an apt description we have for theocratic authoritarians. Interestingly, Conservapedia has no definition of ChristoFasicsm.

Here's a very insightful Bob Nichols (Democratic Underground) way back in 2002 commenting on ChristoFasicsm:

Why are fetuses and embryos more important than non-born again humans outside the womb? Or, what is it that makes the "pre-born" sacred and the "post-born" unworthy of unconditional Christ-like love and caring?

A part of the answer is that the Christian Radical Right believes in the anti-gospel doctrine of Original Sin. This was not part of Jesus' teachings, but invented a few centuries later by a helpful "Saint" Augustine.

So "pre-born" embryos and fetuses are sinless, just like Jesus, and then are sinful at the moment of birth and are believed to be going straight to hell. ...The Christofascists stand in trembling ecstasy ready to be raptured up when Armageddon erupts in the MidEast - and soon, they hope. Dialing up global thermonuclear war is their fondest desire.

Christofascists are consumed by their constant conservative desire for absolute, authoritarian certainty rather than truth. Their grasping belief in the pre-Christian view of God as a vengeful, arbitrarily violent Yahweh sets them up perfectly to follow the commands of any authoritarian leader. These triumphant and confidant sounding leaders are always God-ordained and are granted strict unconditional obedience from the sheep in the pews. The ChristoFascist leaders are all too willing to be judges, juries, and executioners of the unsaved non-believers.

Author Christopher Hedges calls Fundamentalists "American Fascists," but the latest crop of preachers - Word of Faith movement - are even more adamant on promoting their own authority; they make hay out of the needy and the greedy. In a sense, they are more dangerous than what we would consider the common, everyday fascist: they say God is leading them, so you have to bow down to them in turn.

So where does all this do to Lyndon Johnson's dream of a "Great Society"? It gets us as far away from it as possible.

They all had dreams of a greater America. Hard to believe that two of them came from Texas.

This photo was taken just moments before the end of "Camelot"

Pray for Ted Kennedy, if you dare.

ANOTHER Name for Obama?

How About

"He Who Is Jack of All Issues But Master of None" or... "He Who Is Still Timid On Gay Issues?" or... "He Who Will Not Be A Diplomatic Dimwit?" or... "He Who Will be More Like A Kennedy Than A Clinton?"

I just read this:

Obama Gets New Name
by The Associated Press

Posted: May 20, 2008 - 1:00 pm ET

(Crow Agency, Montana) Democrat Barack Obama got a brand-new name as he courted native Americans in the West.

The presidential candidate was adopted as an honorary member of the Crow nation, and given a name that translates as "One who helps people throughout the land."

"What an enormous honor this is," said Obama, occasionally stumbling to pronounce the complex native American names.

Yes, it IS a great honor to be adopted by a Native American tribe. There are so few of them, however, that adoption is the only way to go these days. The article talks about Barack Obama "courting" Native Americans. Politicians "court" while good leaders listen to what the people have to say. Has Obama been listening?

He definitely has listened to what critics have to say, because he has had to fend them off as deftly as possible. The bruhaha raised concerning his statement about meeting with enemies really did get his attention and, I will have to admit, he answered it wisely:

"Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America." -

But has he listened to the gay community? Here's what he said in February in a letter:

365gay.com
Feb. 28, 2008

"And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The letter goes on to say that if elected president he would use the bully pulpit "to urge states to
treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws."

But he also said "I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment."

I think he's faultering there. He gets marks for listening on ENDA and adoption, but not on the issue of civil unions. "The bully pulpit" will definitely not include talking to the other pulpits throughout the country about same-sex marriage. He might be a very good diplomat, but it will take more than diplomacy to right the "right" when it comes to equality for the LGBT community in that respect.

Today, I've just learned that the latest numbers reveal a 24% increase in gay bashings in the year 2007.

24%

Will he remember that if he gets the nomination? Of course, he still has the race issue to contend with in his campaign and I can almost forgive a politician's ADD when it comes to something as heated as race: polls in Kentucky and West Virginia indicate that many voters refuse to vote for a black man and will vote for anyone else if forced to choose - or they won't vote at all.

Another Name? How about "He Who Still Has A Ways To Go"?

***

A personal word on gay rights.

May 21st mark the 29th anniversary of San Francisco's White Night Riots - the result of former City supervisor Dan White receiving only a six year sentence for killing gay supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

I was at the riots, both at the Civic Center and at the Castro. You've never lived until you've had 50 riot-helmeted policemen approaching you in a phalanx. While cop cars were burning at the Civic Center, police were indiscriminately bashing heads along Castro Street. I happened to be in a bar called The Midnight Sun. It was safe: no windows and a steel door. Someone trying to get from their motorcycle to the safety of the Sun was pounding on the door. We cracked open the door and yanked his bloody figure inside. We heard glass being smashed. Later, we found out it was a group of police crashing through the glass doors of the corner bar, Elephant Walk. One policeman went behind the bar and beat the bartender senseless. He was in a coma for months.

This is obviously not something to celebrate. But it is a time for reflection: there are many people who possess such homophobia, that they would do anything to hurt gays. Some of the pictures below are evidence. This world hasn't changed as much as many people would think.

And some people think that's a good thing.

Gay men being executed in Iran

A picture of broken ribs after a gay bashing

Get A Load of San Francisco Values!

This insulting ad for politician Graves' congressional bid posits "San Francisco Values." Why is it insulting? True, San Franciscans like to party, but the money being doled out is usually to charities and non-profits.

And the three paid actors don't look or move like San Franciscans: they're lame and plain. Is the guy in the middle supposed to be gay? Guess he doesn't go to the same bars I do. The men I meet have more rhythm. The young (?) lady in pink looks like she fashioned her character on someone out of the 80s who 's definitely been "supersized" too much. The other woman is supposed to represent a conglomeration of our Asian/Hispanic population. She doesn't. And besides, there would have to be fifty people in the picture to represent all of the ethnic groups we house.

This ad will go out to people who have never even seen a postcard of San Francisco. Is his target group from Appalachia?