This is America, an idiocracy

This is America. We like simple slogans, simple ideas, simple solutions and fast food. We like saying "Don't Tread On Me" without knowing what it really means or the historical context. We like the idea of drug testing needy people because we've been told over and over again that anyone who isn't successful must be lazy or taking drugs. Any solution or idea that requires complex discussion and deep thought is dismissed by the very people who would benefit because they've been told that ignorance is bliss. We stop at fast food drive thrus on our way home from a job where we sit on our ass all day because we can't be bothered to stop at a grocery store and then cook something healthy. Salads and sushi are mocked as "rabbit food" or "bait" by people who have bellies that have blocked their view of their genitalia for years.

People willingly believed that Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were both behind 9-11 because any voice that explained there was a major difference between a secular regime in Iraq and a theocracy in Afghanistan was shouted down as a "terrorist-loving liberal commie". Folks don't go out of their way to better themselves intellectually or physically any more because we have been taught that the only people who do are "elitists". Even beer. Yes, even beer has become "elitist". It is considered cool and patriotic to drink cheap beer from foreign-owned corporations and anyone who drinks something besides Bud, Coors or Miller is some "fancy Yankee".

Yes, this is America and we are already in an idiocracy.

The Christian Right is neither

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. The greatest trick the GOP ever pulled was convincing the working class they had their best interests in mind and then using those same people to become their foot soldiers, an army of "useful idiots". The shock troopers, the true believers,also known as the religious right, not only fight their personal interests but also violate the very teachings of Christ himself by doing so.

Jesus specifically supported things that these same people oppose. Ideas like taxes "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar", personal wealth "You cannot serve both God and money" and military retaliation "turn the other cheek". It is all too obvious that the Christian Right is neither. If they wanted to really be right, and Christian, they
would continue to do things like oppose abortion but at the same time work for social change and equality.
You cannot say you believe abortion is wrong, then not be equally outraged when both civilians and soldiers
are killed in our military campaigns. You cannot call yourself a Christian and be greedy. You cannot call yourself a Christian and think it is ok to trample on the rights of others just because they are different from you.You cannot ignore the plight of the poor because some politicians and their lobbyist buddies have convinced you that they are lazy and don't want anything better for themselves.

So, members of the religious right, if you want to shirk your taxes, cast judgement on others while ignoring your own flaws, hate people who aredifferent from you and just be an overall hypocrite, then by all means go ahead. Just don't call yourself a "Christian", I believe there is a specific Commandment which forbids lying. Unless of course, you were cherry-picking the Bible to justify your own greed and overall nasty behavior, which is what you were probably doing all along, you brood of vipers.

Those who control the past control the future

"Those who control the past control the future. Those who control the present control the past." - 1984

So by this same token, this explains the need of those in the Tea Party and Christian Dominionist theology to rewrite history. If you can control the "facts", then you can control the dialogue and steer it in a direction that supports your platform. Remember that little document Michele Bachmann signed which stated black children during slave days were far more likely to have a father and a mother in the home than they do today? Yet another example of what I am saying here. Now I want you to leave in the comments section your historical facts, as written by the likes of Bachmann and her kind.

The American Berserkers

"Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn." Alfred Pennyworth - The Dark Knight

That pretty much sums up dealing with religious fundamentalists and hardline political ideologists. Whether it is the Tea Party, Christian Dominionists/Reconstructionists, Al-Qaeda or the Taliban; you are not dealing with rational, sane people who can be negotiated with. These are people who make demand, after demand, after demand and then still execute the hostage once it is over. They are not motivated by money, they are motivated by the looney idea that they are on a mission from God and only the complete destruction of the enemy is an acceptable conclusion to the crusade. Like a Viking berserker, folks like Rick Santorum set off political rampages that have the end goal of installing theocracy, dismantling the parts of the Constitution they don't like and replacing it with their strict (and surprisingly inconsistent) interpretation of the Bible. The only real difference between them and the Taliban is one wears sweater vests, the others wear suicide vests.

These are the people responsible for grabbing the wheel of the GOP bus every election year for the past 3 decades and steering it as hard to the right as they possibly can. The mistake the GOP and Wall Street made in 2010 is letting them drive, thinking they could be controlled and making concessions to them. They played to the hard right like never before last cycle because they knew they had to in order to get their votes. Evangelicals and fundamentalists had been repeatedly given just token pieces of anti-abortion legislation and if they weren't given what they wanted this time around, they were going to walk and take their Tea Party with them.

I remember standing on the floor of the Virginia state GOP convention in 1993 and listening to the likes of Ralph Reed and Michael Farris thunder on about how we were a "Christian nation", while watching the homeschool lobby act like we were at a Pentecostal service. Even "middle of the road" candidates (by evangelical standards) like George Allen or Oliver North knew they had to at least pay lip service to the attendees who showed up in their 15 passenger family vans and raised their hands towards the sky like God was going to handpick the nominee right there and then. This isn't a group that can be usually bought off with earmarks, special considerations, or anything like that. They want the end of government as we know it. They want a "Christian" version of Afghanistan under Taliban rule. They would have their own version of the "morality police" to ensure that only married heterosexual couples were having sex and probably only for the purposes of procreation.

I know it sounds nutty to some people but if you've been behind the lines, which I was up until around the age of 17, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I know the inner workings, I know the unwavering faith that these useful idiots have that they are doing what God wants. And if they don't get what they want, they'll be happy to watch the world burn.

Growing up with Fundamentalists

When I was a kid, we were taught many of the things that people like Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck and the wacky right still believe today. "Facts" like the UN and Hillary Clinton were in league to brainwash kids by giving them access to the library with their own library cards, instead of having their parents check out their own books. How groups like Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, Little League and others were secret liberal plots to teach kids to accept things like equal rights for women and recruit kids into secularism and/or homosexuality. We were told over and over again that public education was an evil liberal plot to create a new generation of communists, pagans and homosexuals.

Yet, many of us who grew up in that kind of nutty atmosphere grew up and found out that *gasp*, those were all a bunch of nutty conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods used to brainwash a younger generation. As we grew up, we had experiences in the outside world that caused us to realize that gay people weren't Satan's evil minions bent on turning every child into a homosexual, that most gay people are born that way and education is a blessing, not something that would cause you to go to Hell. We learned that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old, birth control wasn't a sin against God and that masturbation wouldn't make you go blind.

Some people, like Bachmann and the Christian Dominionists, apparently never got that memo. Either that, or they have been so busy repeating the lie over and over to themselves, that they have come to believe their own pile of maniacal religious B.S. This allows them to excuse racism as something else, a rejection of evil in the world or secularism, because they can paint it as that and not a deep-seeded prejudice against people who aren't exactly like them. They go further still, into a perpetual blood-letting versus people of their own ranks who aren't as ideologically pure, who aren't as radical as they are. I believe that what finally got my family away from that nuttiness is that my mother was Catholic, and therefore not as completely "pure" as they were as Pentecostals or Southern Baptists.

This fanaticism and eating of their own will be on full display when the 2012 primaries come around and they primary members of the GOP who didn't toe the crazy line for them. As a person who grew up in a religiously fanatical environment, I look forward to this with morbid anticipation.