Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

Martin Luther King Jr’s claim to have “seen the Promised Land” was an ironic reference for a black pacifist given that the original Promised Land was inhabited by presumably lesser peoples that the Israelites set about enslaving or exterminating—by God’s command no less. Nearly three millennia later, we newly arrived Americans used the Biblical account to justify our own partial extermination of Native Americans and our enslavement of Africans. We called our belief that we, as white American Protestants, had replaced the Jews as God’s chosen, Manifest Destiny, and it allowed us to see others as either obstacles to our progress or tools for our use.

I once took a Sunday School class in which we studied these accounts in which God ordered the Jews to attack cities and kill every person and every animal (except for the young female virgins whom they sometimes got to keep for the victory party). It was a liberal church, and the liberal response to anything vicious, contradictory, or simply stupid about the Bible is: Oh, THAT part isn’t God’s word because it makes God look bad, but THIS part, the warm and fuzzy part about how Jesus loves us, and we’re all going to heaven (all we Christians that is), THAT’S most definitely God’s word. Not so for one old man, who sat there looking for all the world like Santa Claus in a three-piece suit, for he said, “I can only conclude that all those people and animals that God ordered to be killed must have somehow deserved it.”

The stores are already selling Christmas decorations in preparation for the one season of the year during which America talks about “Peace on Earth,” and I will admit that it’s good to have a respite from what the baby Jesus grew up to represent (“I came not to bring peace but a sword”). Jesus’ position on violence certainly reflects America’s approach to problem solving, and we take great pride in the fact that we’re the most Christian nation on earth, which I’m sure we are inasmuch as we are willing to forego necessities in order to buy Hellfire Missiles (“…he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one”). Our love for Jesus is so great that we even paid him homage when we named our favorite weapon, which we quite naturally use to kill those who don’t love him the way we do. Of course, some of them deserve it, I’m sure, but I can’t help but think that we deserve it too. After all, the biggest difference between us is that they kill for one god and we kill for another. Maybe whoever is left alive might finally have Peace on Earth. 

The lesser of two evils is still an evil

I shall vote…whimsically. I shall look at my ballot, and I shall see who is running because the only two I’ve heard about are the only two that the super rich want me to hear about (we’re talking a $2.5 billion campaign here). But shall I vote for Obama or Romney? Naaay, I shall not vote for the Lying Christian Nobel Peace Prize Winning Hit-Man in Chief or for the Lying Christian Foot-in-His-Mouth Buffoon Who Would be Chief. Perhaps, I shall vote for a Green, or a Libertarian, or a Communist (voting for a Communist sounds like great fun in this The Land of the Free and the Home of Brave where Communists used to be deported even if they were citizens). If an anarchist were running for president, I might even vote for an anarchist. I am really excited for me myself to find out who I shall vote for because I haven’t seen my ballot yet, so I only know who Mr. and Mrs. Worth A. Billion want me to vote for. 

You might say that I will be wasting my ballot if I don’t vote for Obama or Romney, but I will say that it is better to waste my ballot than to use it in support of endless war abroad and increasing poverty at home, and do I think either Obama or Romney has the vision, the integrity, or even the popular support to take this country in a new direction? Naaay! If Obama and Romney represent the crème de la escargot of The Land of the Free and the Home of Brave (sorry, foreigners, but we’re freer and braver than you, and we don’t mind saying so either), then we are truly, irretrievably, irredeemably, unremittingly, and forever more screwed, so let the few of us who aren’t too fat to do so bend over now and kiss our asses goodbye.