I may have to stop calling him Lyin' Bill because the word lie implies some knowledge of saying something that isn't true. I think at this point we have to question his sanity.
True,
the need to divide the country with his annual War on Christmas fugue
may have some purpose, like keeping the duller class enraged enough to
make puppets and pawns out of them and since running in circles
screeching Benghazi! Benghazi! doesn't seem to be quite enough to rally
the demoralized dimwits Fox needs to keep in the GOP barnyard, they need
something. But of course dropping such a mindless, bullshit based
annual exercise might make it seem as though they were giving up, like
maggots leaving a rotting corpse. So we're back to the War on Christmas
season and if you were looking forward to some seasonal good cheer now
that the economy is turning a corner, forget it. They're not giving up.
Like Allen West, they're not conceding the loss. Old Bill is at it
again: the 'Fascist' Atheists are stealing Christmas. And the evidence
of this is that some guy said. . . and of course what one unbeliever
says is binding on all who don't believe in God or all the detritus that
clings to every description of it.
Blind rage
against some liberal minority has been a substitute for blind rage
against the failed specter of World Communism and the dishonest
conflation with socialism the batshit Right has been selling for a
lifetime It continues to weaken, but there always has to be the rage,
and a donkey to pin all those tails on. Secularism, Liberal thought and
even some aspects of Capitalism being sold as something entirely
different -- taxation as Communism, for instance; just to have something
to keep the rabble roused. But with the obvious and manifest movement
of Western thought away from the traditional nastiness and paranoia, Fox
and O'Reilly and Rove and all the mad hatters at the Tea Party have a
need for scapegoats that far exceeds the supply and no matter how
pathetic and flimsy and obviously contrived the stories may be, fear and
anger must be maintained. Terrify and enrage or perish.
So yes, the Fascist Atheists
(they'd add Jews if they thought they could get away with it) and of
course the Muslims are trying to make Christmas illegal, raves O'Reilly
with a blindness to irony that can only come from stupidity and
derangement. Capitalist, consumerist culture that's made the Holiday one
of the supporting pillars of retail isn't the reason behind the season.
Madness. A slap in the face to Capitalism and blindness to the fact
that Christmas doesn't need to be, must not be supported or sold or paid
for by public funds and government rules. Besides Christmas is bigger
than ever and that's a good sign.
But backing
themselves into the crooked corner of madness and mendacity, the
fictions begin to become so absurd and obviously contrived that I'm
waiting for the explosion that must certainly come -- and waiting. Can
Bill O'Reilly really bail himself out by insisting that Christianity isn't a religion, but a Philosophy? Sorry,
the idea that God, mating with a young girl and producing a hybrid
offspring that needs to be killed so that this almighty and forgiving
God can now, after thousands of years forgive mankind ( but only those
who believe the story) for the sin they inherited of acquiring moral
knowledge and the stray sexual thoughts one has from time to time is not
a philosophy, it's a religion. Unlike a philosophy, it has no internal
logic, it's self contradictory and has the necessity of creating endless
entities to smooth over those contradictions. A philosophy does not
depend on faith to be true or false. It's a religion. It not only isn't
dependent on facts, it can't allow itself to be tested against
observable reality. Kinda like every goddamn thing that comes out of
Bill O'Reilly's mouth.
Rally the religious. Tell
them their God is under attack, is in personal danger or will be so
angered by differences in gullibility that he will kill us all. It
works for the Taliban, and the Ayatollahs, but it doesn't work with and
isn't compatible with a free society and it's not a philosophy, it's a
religion. God save us from it and God damn Bill O'Reilly and the Fox he
rode in on.
I recall Oscar Wilde writing that Jesus' greatest tragedy was that his followers didn't understand anything he said. The watchwords ought to be "humility," "charity," and "forgiveness," but that isn't what I hear coming from les bons messieurs of the Westboro Baptist Church. All I sense in them is ignorance as thick as the Grand Canyon is wide and a whole lot of hate masked with what few fair words such brutes can muster to suit the occasion.
ReplyDeleteNow and then I've met people who really seem to abide in their faith, and they are almost unfailingly kind -- they place humanity and their fellow creatures above material things, status, etc., which to me indicates that they're headed in the right direction. But frankly, they're the exception, as far as this dino has been able to discern.
Anyhow, three cheers should go to Russell Brand for standing up to those haters. He was quite good as the rascally Trinculo in Julie Taymor's version of The Tempest, by the way.
I saw the Russell Brand interview and thought he was absolutely brilliant. I was actually surprised at his intelligent wit and his compassion. I always thought of him as sort of dull but this was a side to him I quite enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteAny movement, any movement that may have lofty goals and veritable heroes will come to the same sad situation when it gives angry, ignorant and irredeemably dull witted people a means to glorify themselves in its name.
ReplyDeleteSuch followers aren't interested in understanding anything and perhaps aren't capable, but are able to put on a second hand philosophy, a cause, a religion like something they found at the Salvation Army store. It feels great to agree with the mob. It lifts the spirits as it numbs the conscience. It provides a feeling of worth and power and obliterates anything that might have held promise.
Tommy Jefferson felt much the same thing about Jesus -- that his followers had obscured his teachings and in many cases beyond recovery. I quite agree and I would extend that agreement to other teachings from the Buddha to Marx to Rand and to Jefferson himself.