Here's the thing. I know for a fucking fact that, with the exception of a few deranged wannabe screenwriters around the country, nobody reads me. So I'm going to tell the truth here. This is dangerous truth. But nobody's going to notice. Except for you guys. And you're nuts anyway.
Osama bin Laden is absolutely right. We are, in fact, a threat to Islamic civilization. "We" meaning the West -- America, Europe, etc., etc. Our Big Mac culture of consumerism and cultural relativity. "Islamic civilization" meaning a theoretical society based on a literal, fundamentalist intepretation of the Koran and Sharia law. We are at war. Yeah. Duh.
But that doesn't mean we have to fucking admit it.
Back in the 1500s and 1600s, Catholics and Protestants used to kill each other. Now, with a few nutcase exceptions, they don't. But they used to.
By way of example, there's a book called "Foxes's Book of Martyrs." As the title implies, it's a who's who of Protestants who died for God. In one charming anecdote, some dude from England is vacationing in Spain. This visiting Brit sees a parade. A religious procession. There's a glass case at the front of the parade. A monstrance. A glass case displaying the consecrated Host. Said host, according to Catholic theology, has transubstantiated into the body of Christ. The Host, kids, is God. And so, the loyal believing Catholics are bowing and scraping before this sacred wafer. This really pisses the Protestant off. Such idolatry! He leaps to the front of the parade and smashes the monstrance to the ground. For his pains, the Catholics grab him and slowly torture the shit out of his ass. He KNEW this would happen. But he smashed the monstrance anyway. Because he believed.
This kind of stunt doesn't happen so much in the West anymore. We get along. We don't lose any sleep over whether the wafer is transubstantiated, consubstantiated, a sign, a symbol or a fucking cracker. We certainly don't piss off angry mobs over the question.
See, there's a reason Catholics and Protestants, for the most part, get along in most of the Western World. If you get right down to it, WE DON'T TAKE OUR RELIGION SERIOUSLY.
For the most part, we ignore the primitive, pagan, psycho shit that doesn't fit in the 20th century. In the Old Testament, admonitions to stone witches and adulterers to death. In the New Testament, advice like cutting off your hand and gouging out your eyes if it/they lead you to sin, giving away one coat if you have two, and taking infinite shit from any bully who wants to give you shit and never standing up for your rights. We pick and choose. The Bible is a fucking smorgasbord. We fill our plates with Peace and Love and leave the genocide, hate and end-times psychosis.
Hey, believe what you want. It's your business. God is a hairy thunderer. God is a cosmic muffin. Cool. Whatever. Who gives a shit?
This is the recipe for peace. That's what we're trying to sell to the Religion of Peace.
If Ann Coulter and Michael Savage and the rest of these CHUDs don't screw it up, that is.
The Right Wing nuts are salivating over the notion that we're not at war with Islamic extremists -- we're at war with Islam! It's the religion of jihad, goddamnit! They point to this passage or that passage in the Koran. They ignore all the kill-em-all-let-God-sort-it-out passages in our Bible. They ignore the fact ...
That, except for a few loons, wingnuts and idjit heads in militias, almost nobody takes the Bible seriously. This explains why nobody's getting tortured to death over wafers anymore.
Ultimately, the strength of the West is rationalization, bullshit, selfishness and hypocrisy. We say one thing; we do another. We go through the motions at church -- and forget it for the rest of the week. That's what's made us great.
The Islamic world needs to follow our example. We need to destroy their faith and turn it into a purely private affair that nobody takes seriously. Absolutely.
But, for God's sake, don't say it.
Thursday, December 6, 2001
Monday, December 3, 2001
Awkard Segway
Evidently, "It" is a gyroscopic, two-wheeled scooter that makes you look like the biggest dweeb on the planet.
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