It's hard to believe these people actually exist and
harder to believe they've managed to worm their way into positions of
respect and influence in America -- but that's the kind of country we
are, babbling about the bible, scrawling godblather on the walls,
rolling on the floor making gargling noises, respecting and electing
people who can't stop using God's names as toilet paper while shilling
for the oil cartel.
Take the American Family Association, which in the right wing tradition has named itself innocuously with insidious intent; wrapping itself in God, Gospel and flag and having little to do with the American Family other than to deceive them and exploit their superstitions.
Take Bryan Fischer, the director of issues analysis for the AFA who, ostensibly in the interests of American families and their health and welfare, insists that the air isn't getting worse, the ice caps aren't melting at an ever accelerating rate and if we try to reduce our use of petroleum and coal, God will feel like a spoiled kid with a birthday present he doesn't like and probably, if we're lucky, sulk off to his room. If we're not lucky of course, he'll send us more Katrinas and Sandys and earthquakes and floods and fires to burn us, our families and cuddly kittens to death -- amen. So much for analyzing that issue, Bryan. So much for the ironically titled "Conservatives" who see such vermin as allies and use their ravings to justify their rape and pillage of our liberty and our planet.
“You know, God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them”
said Fisher, who thinks you're stupid enough to think that some supreme being speaks through crooks and liars like him and hopes you'll go right out and buy an even bigger truck or two just to put a smile on God's face. Yes, Oil is God's little surprise and he'll just cry if you don't dig it up, burn it all as quickly as possible and poison us all by doing it. If we don't do our part to end life on earth, how will all their twaddle about end times seem when it doesn't happen?
But of course, God doesn't give a shit what we do and we go on taking such people seriously and electing them and their representatives to public office and we go on railing and screeching at people who disagree and unfortunately none of them or us will be here in a hundred years or a thousand to defend ourselves when historians argue about how we let things get so bad -- how we let a rich and prosperous and free country turn into what I'm afraid it will become.
This idea of God burying petroleum in the ground for us to find dates back well over a century. The lady who told me about it is, of course, long passed. She said it in a lovely, delightful kind of way. After all, no one can deny that oil revolutionized the entire earth. The same lady said that her grandparents did the humane thing by keeping their slaves on after abolition. "Where else would they have to go?"
ReplyDeleteIf people are excited about God's plan, they should keep one thing in mind. God didn't make people stupid. He gave us reason, intellect and a sound mind.
It's not the pervasive stupidity that annoys me as much as the way it's exploited by the clever but unscrupulous. I don't for a moment think that these nefarious groups believe their nonsense, they believe in money and power.
ReplyDeleteBut whether people vary in their innate cognitive ability, the conclusion that if God arranged the rock strata on purpose, that it demonstrates a mandate that we extract what's useful as quickly as possible and use it as rapidly as we can and without regard for any consequences and without regard to the possibility of the finite quantities involved cannot be derived from that belief.
What it hinges upon is the assumption that a deity is scheduled to destroy the planet and remove us all to some alternate universe yet to be detected at any moment. I can't seem to differentiate that belief from dementia. I can't differentiate people who thrive on cultivating and even enforcing such dementia from thieves and scoundrels and worse: Republicans.
An alternate buttress to the argument that we can't use up the oil because Jesus is coming to wreck the place soon, is a book written by some Russian claiming that oil is mysteriously and continuously created in situ, so we can't run out.
ReplyDeleteA few years back I encountered a barrage of references to the "world famous geologist" author who of course couldn't be reached and whose only claim to fame was owning several hundred websites proclaiming it in identical words. Perhaps he's faded into well deserved oblivion - if he exists at all - but even if there were a geologist who could reference "mysterious, unknown process" as a scientific argument, it appalls me that there are more than six people anywhere who could believe in the validity of such a childish hoax -- and believe in it and defend it passionately.
That so many are so stupid can certainly excuse folks like me from doubting intelligent design, unless we're intended to remain apes forever, of course.
Well good Sunday morning Capt.
ReplyDeleteCertainly is apparent the redneck God connection thing has gotten under your skin. Understandable. However, other than releasing steam I've found it does little else. Unless of course one enjoys observing "heavenly inspired" fireworks. Which I must plead guilty of doing from time to time. ;-)
Perhaps things may change before our atoms join the cosmos. But I'm thinking likely not.
Why can't we just let Dino's ancestors rest in peace. This is desecration, dishonoring the dead, sacrilege.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible to turn pastors into petroleum?
Octo, I think that would be the best solution: "let my people go!" (Quit outraging our earthly remains by pumping petrol into your tanks.)
ReplyDeleteRN
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much the crimson naped blasphemers I disdain, but the people who use their religion to oppress people, exploit them and their resources for their own oily profit. I wish I could think it were possible to educate people to see that waving a bible or mumbling about God isn't proof of divine authority or even common decency.
Octo,
Many that I've come in contact with are quite oily enough.
Dino,
I was under the impression that oil deposits really originated from marine plankton and probably before the world was ruled by it's rightful and long toothed owners. I won't further dignify that primarily Russian nonsense about mysterious inorganic origins.