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June
4, 2003
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June
4, 2003
The Isaiah Crowd
How
Their Neo-Christianity is Killing Us
By LISA WALSH THOMAS
"And, behold, here cometh a chariot
of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said,
Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her
gods he hath broken unto the ground."
--Isaiah 21:9
The poverty-smashed country of Iraq was never
so grand as its ancestor, that fertile valley between the Tigris
and Euphrates from which came the Sumerians, the Akkadians, and
the birth of human civilization. The great city of Babylon will
always tower over Baghdad itself. The mythical aura never dimmed,
in part because this was not just the civilization of Iraqis
and their predecessors; it was OUR civilization, human civilization.
It was the inevitable migrations of Babylonians and their descendants
that gave us Greece.
If Babylon has fallen, and it has, what
does it say about civilization and the human values that allow
such wanton destruction? The oldest artifacts of civilized society
came from Mesopotamia, now in near ruins, the victim of its modern
treasure, black oil.
While bodies lay still unburied in the
streets of Baghdad, Anglo-American soldiers from the invading
armies watched these irreplaceable treasures stolen and smashed,
while they guarded oil refineries. The image may possibly become
a symbol for the barbarism of the recent invasion.
A further symbol of the nature of this
vulgarity lies in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, regarding the
looting: "They keep showing the same picture over and over;
some guy carrying a couple of vases. There's not twenty vases
in the whole country!" Rumsfeld, of course, knew nothing
of what he was saying but added greatly to the picture of a bunch
of "good ole" beer-swilling cowboys now running things.
No artsy-fartsy sissies, these boys, Rumsfeld may as well have
said.
Religious fanaticism is woven throughout
this terrible tapestry, as it has been throughout most of the
history of our species. Violence is almost always the product
of fanaticism. When Isaiah of the Christian bible writes that
"Babylon is fallen," he is not lamenting; his words
ring of no sorrow or loss.
In the First Gulf War, for example, an
F-16 fighter/bomber had "Isaiah 21:9" written on its
bombs. Why Isaiah?
To this writer's taste, Isaiah was a
pretty bloodthirsty fellow, certainly not someone I would have
wanted my daughter to bring to dinner. In separate verse, he
foretold the deaths of the people of Babylon:
"Every one that is found shall be
thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall
fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces
before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives
ravished." (Isaiah 13:15-16)
Yup, it's all in that bible that George
W. waves around at his photo ops. "Their children also shall
be dashed to pieces before their eyes..." the whole thing,
in the book that is accepted as proof that George W. Bush is
a man of god.
But here is the point: The U.S., in destroying
Iraq and the history of our own culture, has clarified its anti-cultural,
anti-intellectual, anti-compassionate, anti-inclusive stance
in a way that portrays the United States, depicting itself as
the white-hatted Christians, with accurate shock and awe. Few
times in our spotted history have shown us to be as clearly the
bad guys as this rape of Babylon. Old tired eyes can spot all
the mud and grime on those white hats in a nanosecond.
In complacent but rather emotional ignorance,
many Americans believe that we achieved a great victory by militarily
destroying a country that never had a moment's chance against
the military machine that consumes half the globe's expenditure
of materials designed to kill people. It may be that Costa Rica,
which has no army, could have defeated Iraq in the state to which
it had been relegated by twenty-three years of war and sanctions.
A few thousand eager farmers armed with machetes would have provided
a truer balance with the "power" of Iraq than the world's
greatest military might, literally sagging with weapons of global
destruction.
And here it comes, but it's honest experience.
I notice this daily: There is a direct correlation between the
number of flags on an SUV and the pisces/"I ride with Jesus"
stickers. These people, who seem challenged to comprehend the
simplicity of "Thou shalt not kill," know that war
and fundamentalist religion have a connect like kissing cousins,
if only because they both FEEL so damned good.
Of COURSE there are exceptions, but for
the most part I noticed no signs of grief at the supermarket
on the days when children's arms were being blown off, not even
the day the Anglo-American forces marched into Baghdad, killing
thousands of young Iraqi men all on the same day, the vastness
of the killing shocking our own soldiers who were THERE without
a CNN filter. I watched, on several of the days. I saw laughing
people hauling bags and bags of nitrate-jammed, high-fat, processed
foods out to their cars. If they saw my anti-war tee-shirt, they
pretended not to notice, as they climbed into their cars, so
often SUVs with several cheap made-in-China, sometimes tattered
flags attesting to their patriotism.
And a further look too often cemented
the link. There it would be, on the bumper: "God said it,
I believe it, and that settles it."
Fanatical religion has been waving an
axe at anyone who disagreed with it for centuries, and only the
heretics dare ask how one can be so certain that "God said
it," beyond singing the child's verse of "The Bible
tells me so."
As we count up the dead (or, if Donald
Rumsfeld has his way, refuse to count the dead), Franklin Graham,
who called Islam a "wicked religion" is massing his
militant evangelicals on the Jordanian border to set up new ministries
in Iraq (Matt Engel, THE GUARDIAN). These ministries will allow
the starving, conquered people to be paid with food and water
if they "Praise the Lord" and reject Islam.
The presence of these self-described
"Christians" who will first kill, then force their
religion down the throats of the vanquished is not a disconnected
result of the overthrow of Iraq. Their presence, the violence
they engender, is an artery straight from the cancerous imperialism
replanted in our country by the cadre of men now breaking world
records in the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes
to the upper three percent. And the sharpest idiocy of it all
is that those whose wealth is being transferred to the Bushes
and Rumsfelds and Cheneys of the country are in church singing
"Onward Christian Soldiers" with flags in their lapels.
With cold hands, I still remember vividly
my first exposure to what then seemed only glassy-eyed extremism,
so different from the gentle Christianity in which I was raised.
(Yes, I knew about the inquisitions, but that -- I thought --
was the past.) A neighbor I barely knew stepped into my yard
as I was planting daffodil bulbs, her face radiant. She had "good
news" for me.
Having met only briefly I was honored
that she wanted to share what I suspected must be a pregnancy.
By the time she finished her fifteen-minute breathtaking account
of how Jesus was soon to return and that we needed to prepare
for "Rapture," the ascent into the skies, leaving all
the sinners behind to catch the flak when Armageddon came down,
I knew we weren't going to be sharing tea on an afternoon basis.
But what I never even guessed at was how DANGEROUS this young
woman was.
That happened a year later, when my children
became great role-playing buffs and spent hours a day dueling
the goblins of "Dungeons and Dragons." The same born-again
neighbor's son came by one day, saw the Gary Gygax guidebooks
with monsters on the pages. Word spread throughout the neighborhood.
The Thomas household was harboring evil; a child had entered
the house and been overwhelmed by the presence of Satan.
That should have been that, a creepy
little incident I should have summarized and sent to Stephen
King, but it didn't end. A while later, the same boy came after
my daughter with a b-b gun, shooting through a bedroom window.
Fortunately, his god had not taught him good marksmanship.
I should have read Isaiah and I would
have understood, but even then, I took my friends' words for
it: "Give it two years, and the craze will be dead."
Now, twenty years later the streets of Iraq are stained with
blood, and I have few doubts about the connection.
Begrudgingly, I give credit to the people
now running our country and the world for having had some smart
people lay the whole thing out. Religion and the media, the keys.
I'm aware that Isaiah was there from early on, but I'm also aware
that religion is a dynamic force, as much so as language. You
pick and choose. "They" chose the Isaiahs. I doubt
that the Christians devoting their lives to fighting poverty
in Central America have statues of Isaiah on their patios. There's
a skeleton in EVERYONE's closet.
When the people who designed the new
Pax Americana infiltrated religion, they seduced people by the
most spectacular rewards imaginable vs. total horror, eternal
bliss on a throne or roasting in hell for eternity. When they
then took our media, they soaked the country with the message
that the far right had the lock on the throne scene, that liberals
were headed to the flames. And the larger neo-fundamentalist
community has been stocked with leaders and preachers quick to
hiss that Bush is doing God's work, may have even been CHOSEN
by God for this role.
Our people have been threatened, bribed,
and bought. In the past 25 years the message that intellectualism
is bad, freethinking is evil, has permeated the roots of fear
in an entire generation. We are now in a situation we could not
have fathomed in the sixties. We all talk about the apathy, greed,
and shallowness in our country. But I am beginning to see something
I couldn't see a year ago. FEAR. Total ignorance has turned to
anxiety.
People KNOW something is wrong. Dale
Reynolds of Radio Left recently wrote of it in his excellent
rant against Michael Savage and the loss of our media in "What They
Really Said: NOT QUITE A SAVAGE NATION" It's a longish,
very thought-provoking account of Dale's recent visit back to
the states and the differences he noted in the past two years.
But one line has stuck: "All men of violence put God on
their side."
Where is Alexander Pope when you need
him?
"Know then thyself, presume not
God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man." (from
Pope's AN ESSAY ON MAN) I'm a staunch defender of our founding
fathers' insistence that we keep church and state separate. But
their wishes are not being respected, and as I watch a neo-Christian
fundamentalism that seems to make no room whatsoever for the
Prince of Peace who was the God of MY youth, perhaps a reevaluation
of the role of religion today may be our salvation. It is, after
all, in the name of God that the neocons are whetting appetites
to kill, conquer and control.
They are doing precisely what the radical
Islamic fundamentalists are doing, using their religion to their
own purposes and mowing down however many thousands or millions
of people get in their way.
They are controlling the poor in the
same ways that ancient kings and feudal lords did, by justifying
the postponement of equality as something that would come in
heaven, if the poor only did as they were told. Same thing now,
as the middle class shrinks, all the while believing that cutting
taxes on the super wealthy is good for the nation. Those with
such faith are probably unaware that the new tax cut will provide
nothing, as in zero, to one third of the nation, less than 100
dollars to 64 million citizens, $44,500 to George W. Bush, and
$327,000 to Dick Cheney. Tempting it is to think that maybe Bush
and Cheney really DO have God on their side in the face of such
stats.
Not to go poetry-crazy on us, but the
very writing of the above words conjures up old favorites, these
from Coleridge:
Beware, beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
and close your eyes in holy dread
For he on honeydew hath fed,
and drunk the milk of paradise.
Was Coleridge talking about the young
woman whose son tried to shoot my daughter with a b-b gun? I
rather think so, and I'm rather serious. I wonder if she, who
probably supports the new tax bill, suspects how much her grandchildren
will have to fork over to cover the $84,000 tax savings it will
bring to Donald Rumsfeld next year. I wonder if she, still of
Rapture faith, is curious to know why Cheney needs another $327,000
added to the deficit if he is soon to be heaven-bound.
Religion is (or should be) one of the
most personal aspects of our lives. The neocons are no longer
allowing that. What is now approved behavior is to wave a bible
in the air (Bush on the White House lawn), point your finger
(Ashcroft), shout constantly about "evil" (Bush at
every opportunity) and condemn those of "other" faiths.
For some of us, the neo-Christianity,
fanatic as it is, sticks in our throats with the same bitterness
as fanaticism in ANY religion, most certainly including fanatical
Islam, which twists the words of its prophet as strongly as neoChristian
fundamentalists twist the words of the carpenter who advised
us to cast aside our worldly possessions and love all people.
Who ARE the fanatics? We all know: George
Bush, Osama bin Laden, Jerry Falwell, the Taliban, John Ashcroft.
The thinking people of this country have
either joined sides with those from whom they will profit or
they are scared. Possibly, the most powerful tool used to move
us from where we were to the darkness in which we now live is
the "takeover" of Christianity by the men who would
(and probably WILL and maybe already DO) control the globe.
It does not HAVE to be this way. There
are 300 million of us against a few thousand of them. In between
are those who are afraid, who will follow ANY orders for the
gaudy throne and their own 72 angels they expect to hover over
it someday. No, I am NOT bashing Christianity. I am not criticizing
the leaders of churches that teach Christianity as we knew it
a generation or two back. After all, Pope John Paul and the leaders
of EVERY major religion in this country except for the Baptists
begged Bush to scrap his plans to kill Iraq. They BEGGED. It's
not traditional Christians I fear; it's the convoluted, politically-shaped,
ignorant, twisted versions that are stimulated by the power of
emphasizing Christ with a sword in his hand. That image makes
heaps of silver for weapons manufacturers and corporations that
rebuild countries after we've bombed them to dust. That sword
that some see Christ carrying is worth billions.
A reevaluation of what has been done
to Christianity in this country has never been more pertinent
to our survival. I recently asked my eleven-year old: "When
you pray at night, do you feel better if you ask God to please
help us kill thousands of people so that we can have their land
or if you ask Him to bless all the people and animals of the
globe?"
He drew back and looked at me as if I
had lost my mind.
As Coleridge said, "Beware, beware."
We are lying in a desert right now, and we are dying of thirst.
Almost 300 million of us, and we are allowing "them"
to use the tools of sacredness to keep us prone upon the sand.
All the while, water is within crawling distance.
Lisa Walsh Thomas is a lifelong writer and human rights activist.
Her second book, "The Girl with Yellow Flowers in Her Hair,"
is now available through Pitchfork Publishing at http://www.pitchforkpublishing.com.
Lisa can be reached at: saavedra1979@yahoo.com
Copyright 2001-2003 AmericaHeldHostile.com.
All rights reserved, returned to author.
Today's
Features
Chris
Floyd
Copycat Killers: Bush, Jakarta and
the Slaughter in Aceh
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Tells All
Elaine
Cassel
We Interrupt Your Normal Show to Bring You an Important Message
from Michael Powell: "Go to Hell, Americans!"
Tom
Crumpacker
The Politics of US Cuba Policy
William
S. Lind
Fourth Generation Warfare in Iraq
Sam
Hamod
The Final Brick in the Wall
Uri
Avnery
The Altalena Affair
Hammond
Guthrie
Stepping into Some Deep DARPA
Steve
Perry
The WashTimes'
al-Qaeda nuke "exclusive"
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