Booman’s Saturday post Wanker of the Day: Jennifer Rubin contained the following sentences.
Maybe we should wage a war on them? [Racist, fundamentalist Christians] It wouldn’t be that expensive.
Now you’re getting closer to the target, Booman. Racist, fundamentalist everybodys should have war waged upon them. We’re in an evolutionary endgame here. Taliban types, conservative U.S. fundamentalists and their Tea Party/RatPublican brethren…let’s take ’em all out before they blow up the world in the midst of their last-stand act.
But…wait a minute!!! Who’s gonna lead the charge?
The U.S. military?
UH oh!!!
Hmmmm…
Read on for more.
And here lies the real crux of our problem.
A great deal of our military leadership and much of our so-called “conservative” right are themselves fundamentalists. They are a vast, nuclear-armed Christian Taliban. And who arms them? The non-fundamentalist section of our PermaGov…the corporations, whose only real god is short-term, quarterly profit.
(Read ’em and weep.)
Christian fundamentalist bigotry reigns at US Air Force Academy
By Patrick Martin
30 April 2005
Evangelical Christians among the officers and cadets at the US Air Force Academy have created an atmosphere of systematic intolerance towards Jewish and non-religious students, according to reports by minority students and investigations by off-campus groups concerned about the rise of fundamentalist bigotry.
On April 19, academy officials revealed that 55 complaints against religious harassment by Christian fundamentalists have been filed in the last four years, including “saying bad things about persons of other religions or proselytizing in inappropriate places,” a spokesman said.
In response to the complaints, the academy has created a program called RSVP, for Respecting the Spiritual Values of all People, which consists of a 50-minute class that all 4,300 cadets are required to attend. Similar sensitivity sessions will be held for the 9,000 staff and employees of the academy.According to an account published in the Los Angeles Times, Mikey Weinstein, a graduate of the academy and lawyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is Jewish, was outraged by the religious bigotry expressed against his son Curtis when he entered the academy. His son was called a “filthy Jew,” among other slurs.
“When I visited my son,” he told the Times, “he told me he wanted us to go off base because he had something to tell me. He said, `They are calling me a … Jew and that I am responsible for killing Christ.’ My son told me that he was going to hit the next one who called him something.”
“When I was at the academy, there wasn’t this institutional notion that if you didn’t accept Christ you would burn eternally in hell,” he added. “This is not a Jew-Christian thing, it’s an evangelical versus everyone else thing. I am calling for congressional oversight and for the academy to stop trivializing the problem by calling it non-systemic. If they can’t fix it and Congress won’t fix it, the next thing to do is go to the federal court and file a lawsuit alleging a violation of the Constitution and civil rights.”
`Who Teacheth My Hands To War’ – Christian Fundamentalism in the American Military
By astranavigo
Published: February 19, 2010
When I was first acquainted with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, I was tempted to dismiss it as one of several fringe-groups, placing blame on the Right, just as Rightist fringe-groups routinely do the same to the Left. However, fifteen minutes of research gave me pause.
That pause was wrapped up in the efforts of one man; the president of the Foundation, Michael (Mikey) Weinstein.
He entered the U.S. Air Force Academy – and graduated (no mean feat). He’s an attorney – who worked in the White House as assistant general counsel to Ronald Reagan. He knows the Constitution. These are credentials which only come to a select few, and only by hard work. This is the reason his current calling is so compelling. Mikey isn’t a man who takes pot-shots at the government from the safety of a computer screen – he’s earned both the respect of the nation, as well as the street-cred to turn around and challenge its government and its military.
Mikey Weinstein is an engaging man. In his presence, you’re aware of an energy that’s at once focused and committed; a practical idealist whose passion is tempered by a goal, and balanced by a good-natured humor (as evidenced by his Air Force Academy nickname, which stuck with him through the years).
While Mikey had his first encounter with Fundamentalist Christianity when he was in the Air Force Academy himself, it was the experience of his son, Curtis, at that same institution which galvanized his effort. Curtis had been called a `fucking Jew’ and a `Christ killer’. While the emotions were several, and on several levels, Weinstein was mainly angry and embarrassed – angry at what had been done, and embarrassed at what his beloved Academy had become.
He began by doing what he’d always done before a big case or a big project – lots of hard-nosed research.
What he determined through this process was that the Academies at West Point and Annapolis were also full of Fundamentalist Evangelicals who didn’t see it as a violation of their oath to proselytize their version of Christianity on anyone who wasn’t a `believer’. Hundreds of interviews later, he determined that the problem of `God’-over-country is pervasive to the very highest ranks in all branches of America’s military, and that the majority of these officers and senior enlisted personnel are not just Fundamentalist, but subscribe to both Dominionism and Reconstructionism.
At first blush, this all sounds like loony-bin talk. Mikey’s continued research – which brought him face to face with the highest levels of America’s military leadership – provides incontrovertible proof that America is as close as it’s ever been to an outright coup, sponsored by the military and supported by a large and growing subset of American Fundamentalist Christians, who believe that it’s not only their right, but their duty, to `take America back’ for their God.
The problem is so pervasive in America’s military that today, 50% of the chaplaincy appointments in America’s military are held by Dominionist/Reconstructionist Christians. The group Christian Embassy has embedded itself deep in the Pentagon – so deep that Mikey calls it the “Pentecostalgon.”
Dominionism and Reconstructionism
This subset of Christianity holds its roots in the belief that the United States is a `Christian nation’, founded by and for Christians, and that it is the duty of every `good’ American Christian to create a new America which subordinates civil/secular law and the Constitution to the `laws of God’ – particularly, conservative Christian understanding of Biblical law.
In their worldview, the Dominionists and Reconstructionists seek a `reconstruction’ of American law and society in keeping with their views of conservatively-interpreted Christianity -and it’s a simple process:
- Control the education of America’s youth, and you have the future.
- Control America’s courts, and you control not only its legal processes, but its government.
- Control the military, and you control the country.
In other words – a theocracy.
“We have a fanatical `religiosity’; in this case it’s known as `fundamentalist/dominionist Christianity’, mixed in with totally misguided patriotism. Throw in a dash of actual weapons of mass destruction; throw in completely unfettered access due to the draconian specter of military command influence, and then add another swatch of total abrogation of the sacred oath to defend, protect, support and serve the Constitution of the United States – and what you have is a national security threat which is so serious in magnitude that almost no one can believe that it’s there, unless they’re complicit.”
Not much more to say.
So it goes here in The United States of Omertica.
Watch.
AG
P.S. If y’can’t join ’em…beat ’em!
But…how?
That is the question of the decade.
How?
They control the armed forces and the money. And the media, too.
Uh oh!!!
How?
Damned if I know.
Maybe we’ll just have to wait until their own hubris brings the whole house of cards down.
If so, I have a suspicion that we won’t have to wait long.
Maybe only a week or two.
Watch.
I am pleased to introduce General Buck Turgidson’s near relative, Senator John Flaccidson.
If he cain’t do it, nobody can!
Watch.
Precious bodily fluids of the financial republic for which we can’t stand?
Whatever.
Senator Flaccidson to the rescue.
bBet on it.
AG
.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Well, AG, it’s a war within, regarding Homo Sapiens, as old as the species itself. Light vs darkness, consciousness vs ignorance etc. New boss same as the old boss etc. The fight takes place where it always did. So, I don’t think it’s gonna be just a week or two.
Personally, I just want to stay awake, resist social engineering via media to the extent possible; maybe this gives us a slim chance, as individuals, as opposed to none. At least know social engineering is occuring; it’s not ‘news’ or ‘entertainment’ or ‘information’ or any of that generally useful stuff. It’s just control. We’ve got to remember this. There’s no chance otherwise.
This is why 1984 was so very prescient. Not in the exploration of the tools of power, but of individual’s struggle with his own twisted consciousness.
This poor fascist maniac was a tool of Control as well — since he was compelled to believe a lot of stupid shit & commit murder for it, for which he’ll have to account.
.
My new diary with some revealing stuff – Anders Behring Breivik – A Marxist Hunter + Manifest
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
The “week or two” thing referred to the House of Cards, Version Debt Limit/Financial Collapse.
And it’s might teetery right now, that particular card house. One good-sized wind from an unexpected direction could blow it right on down.
Bet on it.
AG
See, I think the type of evil we’re looking at transcends culture & society. The potential now of damage to the house of cards is just symptomatic. What we’re really up against, in terms of waging war, is a more essential engagement. If one house of cards collapses, another one will be constructed, with similar faults if the basis of construction is the power of some over others. Not only do the current powers need blacking out, but the will to power over others does also. That’s the real problem.
“…the will to power over others.”
You mean to say that the human animal is essentially flawed? Because that particular will to power evinces itself in every sandbox and playground on this good green earth.
On the evidence? Yes we are flawed, but we are the least flawed creature that evolution has managed to produce on this earth so far. Thus our unmatched dominance over the planet.
Will we change?
We are always changing.
Will we change in the right directions soon enough to avoid a planet-wide catastrophe?
Only time will tell. We could use a deus ex machina intervention right about now but unless it is happening in almost total secrecy…a distinct possibility if you consider the whole UFO phenomenon…we seem to be on our own.
We shall see, soon enough. I can easily envision an overt right wing military takeover of this country should a default really break the bank(s), and similar occurrences in Europe as well. Martial law as people begin to riot, soon followed by a cessation of elections “Until things calm down.”
Could happen.
May you be born into interesting times.
AG
Yes, the human animal is quite essentially flawed — in such a way that our planetary dominance is completely suicidal.
Without the certainty of change there would be absolutely no hope at all.
Perhaps have DFH join the military? LOL! I almost went to the Air Force Academy because it would have been free college with a pension, but I decided not to; glad I didn’t, but the thought of free tuition was enticing. Now that I’ve graduated my parents keep trying to get me to apply to Officer Training School.
Good for you! You slipped through the net.
The military had four chances at me during the 1960s.
I applied for the Air Force Academy; flunked the physical (underweight), but I was an alternate anyway.
I was in compulsory ROTC in college; flunked the flight physical (too tall for a fighter pilot). Did not sign up for the scholarship.
Looked into OTS towards end of senior year in college; only Army and Marines were available. Ticket to Vietnam.
Called up for pre-induction physical preliminary to being drafted. Flunked for flat feet. (Honest, and it was a Marine doc who made the decision). State vocational rehab had a follow-up interview wanting to know how they could help me with my disability. Surreal day.
Came up toward the end of the numbers in the lottery. A year latter they sent me a IV-F classification.
Truth be told there are lots of DFH’s who are veterans.
Does that mean that we see Joe Wilson riding the bomb?
These analogies and cultural references tend to make my head hurt.
Who the fuck is Joe Wilson?
These analogies and cultural references tend to make my head hurt.
Stanley Kubrick is a cultural icon.
Joe Wilson?
Just another asshole politician.
Fuck these motrherfuckers!!!
AG