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Showing posts with label The Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Family. Show all posts

9.06.2009

Palinbots and Palinistas...

I've actually called them the American Taliban before in discussions with friends. Hardcore radical evangelical Christians who are led by people like Becky Fischer, a youth pastor featured in the documentary 'Jesus Camp':

“I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam,” Fischer said in the documentary during an unguarded moment. “I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places.”
She's talking Christian suicide bombers, people. The idea of radical Christianity is just as bad as is radical Islam. Establishing an American Taliban with dominion over America politics and policy is just as wrong an idea here as it proved to be over there. Not only is it wrongheaded in oh so many ways, it's also un-American and unconstitutional. Freedom of religion and the separation of church and state insure our mutual freedom FROM religion if we so choose as well and particularly NOT a state sponsored religion. Which would be illegal. People really need to read their constitution more closely. Maybe read their bible a little more closely as well.


 Max Blumenthal details the history of how all of this may fit in with the policies and practices of a certain ex-governor of ours up here in Alaska and gives us a nice juicy slice of his book, 'Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party'.


Light Sunday reading, for the win!



-Laz

7.16.2009

Holy Sh*t!

Does ANY of this sound familiar?



Frankly I've always harbored a certain suspicion of anyone who feels as though they are "God's chosen people". I mean, nothing personal but if you go around believing you can commit any sin, any possible atrocious act against your fellow human or the planet and automatically receive a "get out of jail free card" morally and ethically, you are sadly mistaken grasshopper. Actions always have consequences. Oh and congrats to C-Street hypocrite loser number three.

You see I have an idea that when we separate things as "God is up there" and "we are over or down here" one mentally separates the very creator from creation! What is it that isn't a part of "God" or that we are not part of? It is all interconnected. A living, breathing organism to some, a mutually inclusive shared delusion to others. Or both. Or neither. It's your journey, right?

But to commit crimes, to sin amorally and with avarice with no remorse for one's actions or personal responsibility is to throw the whole creation out of whack, out of balance. One works against one's own best interests this way when in actuality we should all naturally prefer to enjoy happiness, prosperity, comfort and longevity and work together to share and wish the same for ALL of our fellow humans during our mutual short existences upon this planet. Otherwise we only repeat the cycle of suffering if one doesn't realize that each and every one of us, indeed each and every single interconnected molecule has an equal and important role to fill in this crazy clockwork of a world.

Or maybe that's just the the "godless" Buddhist in me talking.

-Laz

(note: I edited this a day later to remove gender from the "remove the creator from his creation..." line. Why? Because attaching a gender to something as ineffable (a most excellent word, by the way) as the concept of 'creator' is about as silly as arguments over what people choose to call this 'creator', this animus, this unknown and perhaps unknowable 'thing'. Personal sensibilities usually allow me to avoid attaching any 'thing-ness' to the ineffable as most occidental religions insist. Frankly it offends those sensibilities that much of the world seems to be too busy staking out, dividing, claiming ownership and fighting long standing bitter wars over what essentially boils down to a mental construct, this ineffable. Cast as something that requires both faith and belief to accept. In their eyes, if you don't have exactly the same faith and belief as them then you are the enemy, which is oh so very wrong headed and counterintuitive to the survival of the human race itself. Whereas discernment might inform one that fluidity of the potentiality of ideas and our ability as humans to manifest compassion directly as ACTION rather than just words is where the balance of our mutual co-existence on this planet should reside. - 7/18/09 12AM

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Updated 7/20/09 6:30PM

More horrifying details of "The Family" came out today in an article by Jeff Sharlet of Salon. The list of politicians associated with the C Street house is practically a laundry list of all the bigots who oppose Obama not because of reasoned argument against any particular policy of the administration but because these people see themselves as Christian warriors on a mission, directly communicated to them by God. I kid you not. The more light that gets shone upon their delusions of grandeur the better. Again, Jesus himself said "the kingdom of heaven is not of this Earth..." -- isn't it about time people like these started listening to the actual words their savior instead of their own pompous egos?

-Laz