2016 years after the ostensible birth of christ, the anachronism of our new president’s inaugural weeks defies time and place. Substitute any other religion’s preposterous sorcery for the theocratic christian nonsense now spewed forth by the president, and it would be just as absurd. A non sequitur in the irresistibly vibrant, diverse, and godless future.
Photos of the new leader of the free world at work show rooms full of hovering wasps, smiling gleefully as he does his damnedest to sign away 60 years of social and civil rights progress for everyone else. Not a black, latino, muslim, jew, or asian among them. Edelweiss.
Their slavish devotion to a revolutionary jewish magician who may or may not have ever even existed is a testament to the fact that some people really will believe almost anything. However dubious. Based on this outrageous spectacle, it’s safe to say the president’s people believe in meathead Jesus. And the followers of macho christ do some pretty important things.
They do not give a shit about anyone else. Or whatever artificial, affirmative action, safe space, trigger warning identity politics are conjured out of thin air to make people feel better. They also eagerly defend the vast cornucopia of things that alternately either makes America great, or will make it great again soon.
Depending upon which part of the last century you ask them. 70 years ago, it was god, country, mom, and apple pie. Now, it’s obscene and illogical.
Because tireless family values defenders are at the same time those usually most dedicated to preserving the vast, boggling constellation of dumpsterfire pop culture options arrayed against them. Their godly convictions constantly under siege by fast food, special effects, reality tv, fame, sports fans, online shoppers, ultimate fighters, action heroes, first person shooters, celebrities, and pornstars. Anything, as long as it’s not real. And rights, at all costs and everyone else’s expense.
These people like to claim they don’t change. That the world just changes around them. But those who think the world has coarsened over the ages have either had their eyes closed or never had an honest relationship. For people do and say the same needlessly cruel and carnal shit that they have for thousands of years.
Sodom, Gomorrah, Babylon, and Rome earned their reputations for sexcess long ago. We just hear, see, read, and know more about pleasures of the flesh now thanks to streaming internet, social networks, and affordable jet travel.
All-powerful, all-knowing
And they really will believe almost anything. Like there’s an invisible man in the sky. Who’s really into your pants. And the war economy. Who can do and knows everything. But has nothing better to do with his infinite time than worry about what we’re doing within the restrictions of our own.
Today’s neomuscular christians are particularly prone to mockery. Because their martyr is in his own words an antiwar, anarchopacifist activist who hung out exclusively with sex slaves, the working class, and criminals. And was only once in his life ever righteously angry.
This; yet the frenzied backwoods cults in hillbilly jackass churches littering Merica’s carnage cling to unwitting idiot iconoclasm. Automatic, reflexive support of the forever war and vicious moralizing standards impossible for even their own leaders to meet.
Rare indeed is the evangelical megapreacher unscandalized by gay or porno public shaming. But there’s a silver lining. Because this always presents the perfect opportunity for their other favorite things: rehab, recovery, repentance, redemption, resurrection, salvation!
But most importantly, their loving, merciful, and peaceful – yet easily offended, vengeful, and not at all hypocritical – god is directly responsible for everything: holocaust, black death, slavery, colonialism, natural disasters, you name it. Yet at the same time somehow also inexplicably unable to stop it.
Utterly helpless and hooked on earth virgins
Could have forestalled it all, but no. Like every good dad, he let it be a learning experience for us. Because he loves his children and wants us to be good.
And that’s why an allpowerful, allknowing allthing failed to see some pretty obvious problems with his creation. Like famine and floods, odd placement of sex organs right next to digestive ones, or global warming and resource scarcity.
For those unfamiliar with the faith, most of the credulous also believe – or refuse to admit they don’t – that god then entered an earth virgin’s reproductive system to bear himself as his own son. That’s right. He cosmically sexed himself into earthly existence. He’s his own daddy. A weird idea early christians merely coopted from a widely dispersed narrative prevalent across the prechristian pagan world.
Generally accompanied by a core set of easily identified common characteristics: cosmic annunciation; three eastern visitors; solstice birth; carpenter foster father; fled childhood persecution by a threatened king; baptism; desert walkabout; overcame temptation; gathered disciples; performed magic, miracles, and blessings; gruesome public execution; hell; resurrection; and ascension.
America, meet your new policymakers.
Every dog has its day, as long as it’s a white man
So now at long last, believers shall have their ultimate day in the sun. Sensationalist, easily-scandalized family values folks’ irrepressible desire to judge the rest of us by quaint criteria we played no role in selecting will finally get to dictate all of our lives. Been hard out there for a white Christian. Constantly under siege by the omnipresent gutter trash pop culture they themselves spawned.
It’s like they suddenly now live in the same country they spent generations tirelessly creating to oppress others. Not realizing they’ve always been welcome to live however they like and make their America whatever again. Just leaving the rest of us out of it.
And judging from photos of their attendance at inauguration, it appears many did just that. Stayed home. Perhaps fearful of exotic second amendment fellow travelers in DC. Hordes of angry, concealed-carry slave descendants also exercising their constitutional right to menace passersby with firearms.
The dying white tribe actually bears most of the responsibility for what they criticize anyway. After all, they created it. Not their workers, slaves, women, or closeted gay children. Those people had nothing to do with this world built upon their backs. Deacons, CEOs, coaches, generals, salesmen, mayors, managers, and businessmen built it.
Imperious, judgmental father figures who know better than you what your life is like and how to improve it. Always men. Like every serial killer and tyrant in history. It is no coincidence all dictators are male.
Yet Congress still remains basically just two big rooms of old white multimarried men who have disrespected women and minorities most of their lives. How that remains the case when the country no longer reflects it is the unsatisfying answer to miracles and magic believers’ timelessly naive question: “will wonders never end?”
No, unfortunately they will not.
Abel Cohen writes about Russia, real America, and elections at Counterpunch.
