Rule The World… One, Poor, Innocent, Ignorant Bastard At A Time
“Everybody wants to rule the world…”
So goes the refrain from the 1985 hit song by Tears For Fears. Curt Smith, founder of the band, said of the song, “The concept is quite serious – it’s about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes”
Power, warfare and misery. Three things that religion heavily relies upon to promulgate its doctrines and feed the spread of its immoral disease. Religion demands power because it claims inherent right to it through divine proxy. Religion declares war, figuratively or otherwise, on all who oppose it. And, religion uses human misery as a tool to lure and indoctrinate the innocent and the ignorant. Religion wants to rule the world… One, poor, innocent, ignorant, bastard at a time.
“Cranks”
“Christian thought… often gave irrationality the status of universal ‘truth’ to the exclusion of those truths to be found through reason. So the uneducated was preferred to the educated, and the miracle to the operation of natural laws.” – Charles Freeman, Historian
“Ignorance, whether willful or otherwise, is a very dangerous state. When left unattended and unchecked, it can, and will, eventually lead to mass societal and political dementia. Eventually what’s real becomes unreal, truth becomes fiction, and reason vanishes in the cloud of the delusion. What’s left is an institution run by the patients and where chaos becomes the new norm.” – RJ Evans
“Cranks” is a term used by Charles P. Pierce in his book Idiot America to describe wild, crazy, insane, lunatic ideologues, people whose ideas are far removed from reasoned, logical, educated thought. They are folks who, at one time, were dismissed for their obvious disconnect with reality. But today, their crazy, whacked out, illogical and woefully ignorant rhetoric has become an accepted and extremely influential part of American culture, politics and discourse. As Pierce notes in Idiot America, “The rise of Idiot America, though, is essentially a war on expertise. …The rise of Idiot America today reflects – for profit, mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in pursuit of power – the breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good.” Pierce also notes that the best way to sum up his tour of Idiot America is with a quote from pastor Ray Mummert who said the following after the Dover, PA decision against the teaching of Intelligent Design. “We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture.”
When Yin Becomes Yang And Vice Versa
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” – Blaise Pascal
The “cranks” are slowly inheriting the earth, demanding to rule the world one, poor, innocent, ignorant bastard at a time. In America, it’s fundamentalist Christianity that takes “crank” to a whole new level. Fundamentalism, once considered an outsider of mainstream religious belief in the United States, has become a mainstream political and social movement. The dogma has hijacked the Republican party, expelled the voices of moderation from the party, shredded the Constitutional principle of Separation of Church and State and invaded public education to the detriment of American youth . The efforts of a minority, a religious crackpot cabal of dominionists, reconstructionists, and other theocratic screwballs, has paid big dividends toward the eventual establishment of theocracy in the United States. What’s more, moderate Christianity is slowly but surely embracing the message of fundamentalism. But, it’s doing so because fundamentalism has redefined the words “liberty”, “freedom” and “justice” without telling anyone. In American Fascists, author Chris Hedges states, “…values, democratic and Christian, are being dismantled, often with stealth, by a radical Christian movement, known as dominionism, which seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of the Christian faith and American patriotism”. Hedges also notes, “They engage in the slow process of “logocide”, the killing of words. The old definitions of words are replaced with new ones. Code words of the old belief system are deconstructed and assigned diametrically opposed meanings. Words such as “truth”, “wisdom”, “death”, “liberty”, “life”, and “love” no longer mean what they mean in the secular world. “Life” and “death” mean life in Christ or death to Christ, and are used to signal belief or unbelief in the risen Lord. “Wisdom” has little to do with human wisdom but refers to the level of commitment and obedience to the system of belief. Liberty is not about freedom, but the liberty found when one accepts Jesus Christ and is liberated from the world to obey Him.”
Other strong influences of fundamentalist Christian dogma on moderate Christianity are the powerful motivations of despair, isolation, disconnectedness and, of course, fear. While there are many divisions within Christianity as a whole, and many moderate Christian denominations tend to resist the extremism of fundamentalism, Hedges writes, “…within this mass of divergent, fractious and varied groups is this core group of powerful Christian dominionists who have latched on to despair, isolation, disconnectedness and fear that drives many people to these churches. These dominionist leaders have harnessed these discontents to further a frightening political agenda. If they do not have the active support of all in the evangelical churches, they often have their sympathy. They can count on the passive support of huge numbers of Christians, even if many of these Christians may not fully share dominionism’s fierce utopian vision, fanaticism or ruthlessness.” Hedges goes on to note that the “appeal of the movement lies in the high ideals its radicals preach, the promise of a moral, Christian nation, the promise of a renewal.”
Once words have been redefined, the “cranks” easily take advantage of current events and tragedies, using them as hooks to reel in believers of all flavors. It’s at this point that the fundamentalist promise of “renewal” becomes a strong emotional manipulation. Fundamentalists take great pride in fueling the fires of despair, isolation, disconnectedness, and fear in a public forum, by claiming that all Christians are persecuted, unborn babies are being murdered, homosexuality is the equivalent of child rape, that the economy is failing due to moral decay and that science is a deception. Add to this any number of other issues that have potential to illicit strong emotions in the populace and suddenly their agenda for “good” overshadows any care for the real agenda of dominion.
Take A Look Around
“They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy” – Robert O. Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism
I’ve laid out the groundwork for how Christianity wants to rule the world. There are many of you out there, Christians who consider yourselves to be moderates, and who will firmly argue that you support the Separation of Church and State. You will most likely call me out and declare that I’m painting all Christians with the same brush. You would be right. I am. And here’s why… Your silence on matters of religion in politics in America is deafening. While you may reject the fundamentalist’s conduct and doctrine and some of the political pandering on their behalf, you fail to realize your own hypocrisy. You see…You still insist on serving a master/s. God, Jesus. You still believe in putting a king before your democratic republic “by the people and for the people”. You still vote thinking we are “One Nation Under God”, and you still insist on some form of religious encroachment into matters of government. There is no freedom found through belief. More importantly, by not speaking out, and not speaking out loudly, against fundamentalist dogma… by cloaking any of your discontent in “They’re not really Christians” or “Why can’t we just co-exist?” or “But Jesus loves everyone”, you are surrendering your right to believe the way you want to believe in this country. You are surrendering it to those who will demand your allegiance to their dogma when they wrestle power from the Constitution. Take a look around. Everybody wants to rule the world. One, poor, innocent, ignorant bastard at a time.
January 30, 2013 at 7:41 pm
VERY well said, my friend. Power, warfare and misery. Indeed…