War Against Islam Moves to Tennessee

What is he doing back there?

The Christian Crusades against Islam have moved to the United States. Apparently, Christian American terrorists only recently realized that all of their doctors, dentists, engineers, and falafel salespersons are Muslims. So, obviously, once they figured this out they decided to bomb Dr. Mohammed and his buddy Hassan the Giro King, or at least burn down their devil worshiping temple. You know, “Allah” means “satan” in towelhead language.  Looks like some Christian Terrorist Teabaggers torched the mosque in Murf. TN. I lived in Nashville for 10 years, and Murf is the hometown of Middle Tenn. State Univ. Apparently, the mosque had big backing and was moving along nicely. There’s shitloads of Muslims in Murf and the surrounding area working in various fields. Professors, doctors, engineers, and lots of refugees and more recent immigrants in service occupations–American Citizens, all of them. The Nashville area is more diverse than people think, but of course the Christian Americans are trying to change that.

Holy baby Jesus Diapers! Most Christianist Americans continue to believe that Barak Hussein Obama (aka, the AntiChrist) is a Muslim (which is bad, of course, right?).  While some religious liberals have expressed support for religious freedom and objections against bigotry, the voices of sectarian protestantism, the LDS, and the conservative activists in the Catholic Church seem clearly in league with the crusade against Islam in the US and abroad. It’s flabbergasting to see Jews weigh in against Islam! Gee, you know….George Washington once promised that America wouldn’t just tolerate Jews, but would accept them as full citizens–as Americans. Real Americans. But, I guess we can’t do that with them Muslims right. After all, we’re at war with Islam.

And so, Real Christian Americans are rising up and opposing mosques throughout the United States! It’s not just for NYC. Indeed, the “ground zero” mosque is the third mosque in NYC to meet serious opposition in the last few years. Brooklyn is also sacred (in a Judeo-Christian but-definitely-not-Islamic-kind-of -way)  lest we forget.  Christian America.

Activists versus Intellectuals, a curious turn

wa

Walt

Ah, praxis we called it, and it was all the rage. Yes, neomarxist argumentation claiming that we should put ideas into action in the contemporary world to help foster the REVOLUTION. ALL HAIL THE FUCKING REVOLUTION.  Unfortunately and predictably, praxis works best for ideologues who have access to resources. Then, they can put their ideas into action using resources garnered at low cost from the state or other sources of collective capital! And so we have influential ideologues seeking to demonstrate the truth of their faith. In the end, what do they want? Ban adoptions for single women? Prohibit birth control? Ban single sex cohabitation? Forbid cohabitation? And, we’ll enforce this by, what, stoning fornicators? Nah, you’ll probably just seek to deny them and their children health care, or social security, or unemployment benefits. Let those sluts and their bastards starve in the streets, eh? Jesus wants it that way, probably, I guess.

Intellectuals matter. They spur and support movements which have real consequences for people’s lives. Shit like the Holocaust happens because ideologues justify them, and those ideologues were intellectual elites. I absolutely love Stephen Walt.  He’s one of the calm voices who assures that while everything is fucked, it’ll be sortof ok in the end. But, of course, everything is still fucked. Walt was moved into a life of scholarship by a lecture by Gordon Craig on the importance of intellectuals  for the formation of political movements which might have confronted nascent fascism in Europe in the early 20th Century:  “The German left was contemptuous of the liberal aspirations of the Weimar Constitution and other bourgeois features of Weimar society, while right-wing “thinkers” like Ernst Junger glorified violence and disparaged the application of reason to political issues. So-called “liberal” intellectuals saw politics as a grubby business unworthy of their refined sensibilities, and so many just disengaged from politics entirely. This left the field to rabble-rousers and extremists of various sorts and helped prepare the ground for Nazism….The lesson I took from Craig’s lecture was that when intellectuals abandon liberal principles, disengage from politics, and generally abdicate their role as “truth-tellers” for society at large, it is easy for demagogues to play upon human fears and lead a society over the brink to disaster.  So I decided to forego a legal career and get a Ph.D. instead, hoping in some way to contribute to more reasonable discourse about issues of war, peace, and politics.”

Yeah. I didn’t get into my job that way. I assumed that all intellectuals were reasonable and caring and liberal and driven by a desire to help the world.  Boy, was I deluded or what?!!! Yet, Walt’s point gives me motivation. I can help resist letting sociology fall to the right wing ideologues.  They’re out there in front of some mosque or abortion clinic or immigrant assistance center right now…..

Mosque of Death

Well, the new Christianist-Zionist whipping boy is that them damned Muslims is buildin’  ‘em a devil worshiping factory right on top of the ruins of the good Christian World Trade Center, thus replacing Godly Christian-Jewish Capitalism with unholy, socialist, homosexual, devil-worshiping Islam right in the heart of Jesus Fearing Manhattan.

Jesus fucking Judas! First, of course, I’m opposed to allowing religious groups to develop tax-free property, and I think that all religious structures are businesses and should be subject to whatever codes would apply to a liquor store, porn shop, or ice-cream parlor.  Second, the “mosque” in this project is nothing more than a little chapel like thing—what this is is a bunch of rich Moslems in NYC (notably disconnected from the more religious types) putting in an Islamic version of a YMCA so people who work in the belly of the beast can have a daycare and kids camps, go swimming, workout, play basketball, and have anonymous sex in the locker room with people who share their religious superstitions. If you look at the long list of Muslims killed in the 911 attack, you can think that there are probably shitloads of Muslims working in all of those big tall buildings who might want to run out and hit the elliptical machine at lunch, or drop their kid off at summer camp, or get a quick blowjob in the locker room….It’s fun to be at the YMMA!

Third, since when is “two large NYC blocks and around the corner” the same thing as “right on top of the smoldering remains” ? I’m guessing that they wish they could find a cheap enough property away from the environmental hazards of “ground zero”–especially since the Repugnicans blocked health funding for “Ground Zero.”

Of course, since Christians and Jews hate Muslims and anyone who they think might be a Muslim (Sikhs, especially), this kind of shit is being reenacted all over the country–just not in front of the TeeVee cameras.  Religious freedom means the freedom to use the tax dollars of the United States of America to promote Christianity and Zionist Judaism, and to prevent other religious groups from operating. Thank you Jesus, Thank you Lord….

Never Forget Day

"Good, that'll give me an excuse to invade Iraq...."

Tengrain and the Mocksters are amplifying this important date to commemorate when Dubya ignored the intelligence memos about an immanent attack from Saudi Rich Boy Osama bin Ladin. It really is sad. In less than a decade we went from being a relatively happy, prosperous nation to being a third world country with a trashed economy, totalitarian political leanings, and in a perpetual state of war.

I wonder if the Antichrist is finished with Afghanistan yet…..

Francis Collins, to be Perfectly Clear…

Not an Evangelical....

There is a lot of confusion about Francis Collins’ religious commitments, and both conservative Christians and opponents of theocratic control over scientific resources have contributed to the misunderstanding. For some odd reason, the Antichrist, Barak Hussein Obama, appointed this yahoo to be head of the NIH, even though it is certain that Collins did not vote for Obama. Despite being the Antichrist, and a totalitarian who is, literally, the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler, Obama loves to make compromises and to make sure that his opponents (the good Christian Republicans) don’t feel left out of decisionmaking. It must be some kind of plot that only the Antichrist can understand.

Both Christianists and scientists fearful of sectarian adulteration of science mischaracterize Collins’ religious commitments as being “evangelical Christian.” That’s bullshit. And, from the Christianist side, that kind of bullshit is designed to unite vague liberal Protestants–like Collins–with backwoods fundamentalists. See, here’s a scientist who believes in Jesus! Therefore? What? Really? Which Jesus?  What is lacking in all of this brouhaha is any substantive analysis of just what Collins believes, which religious groups he aligns with, and what that means about the limits of doing science while believing stories about the supernatural.

Collins is not and has never been an evangelical Christian. He is not a member of a denomination which supports evangelizing. He is not a member of an exclusivist sect which purports to have sole proprietorship on positive supernatural compensators (heaven) and protection from supernatural punishments (hell). He rejects the evangelical identity.  He is not a fundamentalist, by any means. Indeed, he ridicules biblical inerrantists using a common Catholic argument against such perspectives. Collins believes in evolution, and is clearly a strong scholar. He has a vague, ephemeral theology, where salvation isn’t really about hellfire or heaven, but an almost Tillichian oneness with god. Collins’ Jesus has almost metaphoric divinity, and his “creator” is by no means an old judge in the sky. What is Collins? Well, fucking Duh! HE’S A LIBERAL PROTESTANT!!!! He’s not at all an evangelical, or fundamentalist or sectarian. Why doesn’t anyone come on out and say that? Ok, I just did.

The reason why Christianists want to make Collins out to be a fundy, is that supports their contention that there is no conflict between religion and science. But there is a strong conflict between fundamentalist religion and science, which is why there are no true fundamentalist scientists of Collins’ caliber–not Moslem, not Hindu, not Buddhist, not Jewish, not Christian. If the monkey warriors built the mountain range for the war god, then there isn’t much point in studying plate tectonics.

I doubt Collins will have any negative impact on medical scientific research at NIH. However, he will have a profoundly negative impact on social scientific and public health research. I want to know what he thinks about sexuality, poverty, health education, birth control, health service provision, racial disparities, and things like that. How does his faith inform those things? My guess is he’s stuck in the early 20th century social gospel, the folks who brought us the syphilis epidemic and “charity” based public health. That’s why he was a horrible choice. Fucking Antichrist can’t do shit right, no wonder Jesus is going to kick his ass in Armageddon…..