Night of the Living Jesus

It's been interesting to observe the progress of  Zombies in popular culture in America, from the brain damaged product of some Voodoo poisoner to the brain eating corpse from Night of the Living Dead to the complex creatures with many characteristics and features we see in The Walking Dead.  There are versions of course, but  the Zombie of Hollywood fame has evolved.  We know you have to shoot one in the head, that Zombies don't climb, that they transmit the condition by biting their victims, that they don't die even if they don't eat and if they rot away to almost nothing. Those beliefs have been added in the last half century, but like the things that stick to folk heroes and mythological creatures over the centuries, we see them as always having been the way they are now.

It's sort of the same with Jesus.  History tells us nothing about him, Nobody who ever saw him wrote a word about it.  What we get from the selected texts is contradictory and loaded with bits of earlier myths, but the Jesus today: the personal investment adviser/Lord of the Universe has become very complex and diverse, with every generation, each age adding or removing features and characteristics.  We even know just what he looks like.  He looks a lot like Albrecht Duerer in fact and that's a lot different from images found in early churches.  But human creations, passed from generation to generation evolve much as Darwin suggested that living things evolve.

So why not a Zombie Jesus?  Nothing is more mutable than that which never existed outside of fiction and myth, yet nothing is subject to more Denialism, rage and aggression when change is proposed.  Just ask the Dixons of Cincinati, Ohio who set up a Zombie Nativity scene on their front lawn, thereby raising Holy Hell.

But where's the beef?  Isn't Jesus risen from the dead?  Isn't he still around?  Well one thing never evolves and that's eternal self -righteousness and humorless zealotry.  The idea that religious tolerance means protection from insult adds a bit of  sweetness to this confection, coming as it does from a religion famous for defaming and persecuting any and all other religions and even variations of the same one.  All beliefs, all religions deserve equal protection under the law -- and praise be: a tax exemption.


The Dixons are getting resistance from Zoning boards and neighbors who know just how and where Jesus was born and to whom and what he looked like.  They know all about his parents and their sex life and everything they know is the accretion of thousands of years of speculation and unwarranted assertion - and of course invention.  Look, it's a free country and no matter how much you hate the idea,  Zombie Jesus is risen. He lives forever. He gives eternal life and destroys sinners when he brings the apocalypse, and like religion in general he eats your brain.  It's been foretold and the Church of Jesus Christ, Zombie is here to take your donations.

Hark, the Trump of God Doth Sound.

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End Times

These are the end times our Christian friends have been warning us about and all the signs are here -- including this one.  War, Famine, Pestilence and Death have been with us as long as men have been men, but the long feared, long awaited fifth horseman is galloping toward us with flying hooves: Immigrants!   

You'll note that the building houses a church that caters to Hispanics, mostly Guatemalan and Mexican. It's undoubtedly where they meet on a Sunday and plot their rapes and drug deals: plot to spread disease and to steal our lawn mowing and dish washing jobs.   Only Trump can stop them. Only Trump can stop the Infidel from blowing us up and the Atheist from doubting the most ridiculous story ever told.  Only Trump can make us great again.  Only Trump can explain just when that was and why it was we were so great, because when I look at our past it looks angry, superstitious, intrusive, bigoted, racist, militaristic, amoral, violent and wanting to expel people like Trump's ancestors and mine, with their funny names and strange languages.

Vote Trump -- for the way we were.

How do you like your blue-eyed boy Mister Death

Scarcely a day after the San Bernardino massacre, many questions remain unanswered. Thus far,  among the 14 dead and 21 injured were clients with developmental disabilities -- helplessly handicapped -- and their caregivers. What else do we know?

According to reports, there was a heated exchange at the social services center. A man stormed angrily from a meeting room. He returned later with an accomplice. Together, they aimed for maximum body count in the shortest possible time.

The shooters were a man and wife armed with assault rifles, handguns, tactical gear, and high capacity ammunition magazines. Hardly a spontaneous act, these superficial details suggest advance planning and preparation. 

Was the massacre a work-related revenge killing, an act of terrorism, or a hybrid of motives and methods as yet unknown?

Yesterday, our news media reported unsubstantiated rumors with headlined hearsay and mindless blather. Tomorrow, no doubt, reactionary voices will jump to conclusions with reflexive blame, opportunistic pandering, and ritual scapegoating.

No doubt, the NRA will place “good guys with a gun” on a pedestal alongside Buffalo Bill’s Defunct -- American idols of anachronism, snake oil, and sleaze.  Once again, the NRA will blame victims for failing to defend themselves. Rehearsed rhetoric from recycled scripts will condemn victims to silence -- shades of Aurora, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Roseburg, Tucson, and Virginia Tech.

All of which makes me madder than hell. No longer will I accept carnage as currency in exchange for unfettered gun rights. No longer should we tolerate errors of mystification that lead to an overwhelming conclusion: Nothing can be done.

Those who perpetuate the madness -- the NRA, the gun lobby, 'open carry' extremists, and politicians of every stripe on the NRA payroll -- have blood on their hands.  From this day forward, let us treat them as enablers, collaborators, and co-conspirators.  Never again should we accept partisan deadlock and Congressional gridlock as an excuse for protecting this American death cult.

14 Dead in San Bernardino

And so they were Muslims.  Every time I read of some crime in the papers, I hope the perpetrator isn't Jewish.  When I see some bad behavior on the road by a motorcyclist, I cringe. Humans habitually make generalizations and form prejudices that get applied to me and I know there are millions of Muslim Americans feeling sick to their stomachs this morning.

There is fear of reprisal as our Republican leaders in waiting talk about rounding them up, tagging them, watching them, spying on them -- and we are probably doing some of that already.  One Republican leader talks of killing terrorist's families  while his followers nod together in agreement like turbaned viziers in some Arabian night.  One can almost hear the bedrock cracking, the foundations of civil liberty splitting apart under the mortar fracking rhetoric.

Those fourteen dead are not the only victims.  Our silly and arrogant claim to be the "leader of the free world" is shot full of holes too and for good reason.  I got emails yesterday challenging me to prove that Obama isn't a Muslim and listing damning bits of evidence such as not visiting France after their latest terrorist attack.  I'm sure that in his mind the president is smiling over this incident while plotting more of the same.  I should mention he's a retired Air Force Intelligence officer. People believe this garbage with the same unquestioning faith they have in their sacred books and imaginary gods.

Strange to say, amidst the predictable litany of calls for unidentified gun control the only concrete idea I hear this morning comes from our duly elected president.  What about making gun and explosives purchases by those on no-fly lists illegal?  Indeed, why not?  Neither Obama nor the mayor of San Bernardino thinks it will stop the war now going on but it might help and it will be no inconvenience to gun owners like me.  It won't likely happen though because of the fear of the NRA in Congress.  Sure, round them up, make them wear scarlet letters or yellow stars or pointed caps, but let them buy guns because any gun law is a blow to freedom.  It won't happen because Obama is a Muslim and because Democrats are gun grabbers.

When next I travel abroad, I may speak only German.  As I said people make generalizations. . .

Through a Glass Darkly

Almost eerie this afternoon, reading American Rifleman magazine at Bob's barber shop: decorated to look like an old west sort of a place with old nostalgic gun and ammunition posters and antique guns displayed on hooks.  I had been attracted by a picture of a beautifully engraved Benelli shotgun on the cover.  I have little interest in owning one at twenty five hundred bucks, but it would be nice to hold and maybe shoot a few clays with such a piece of fine Italian craftsmanship, but I don't have the time or the venue these days.

But then there were the editorials by people such as Wayne LaPierre: mad dog drooling rage about gun grabbers and how gun control is there just to penalize good people for the sins of others.  I don't know what that means, but it's Wayne LaPierre. He and the Magazine of the NRA have no other purpose than to outrage, infuriate, inflame and incite and everything seen through the filter of his insanity has the same purpose and one unifying creed:  Life is better with guns and owning guns is the one and only measure of freedom. Anything and everything he writes contains the same carefully arranged sequences of inflammatory code words, honed and perfected to manipulate his flock as skillfully as any Preacher on Sunday morning TV, to achieve a transcendental ecstasy of anti-government, anti-Liberal, Anti-Obama paranoia.

Coming home on this stiflingly hot and humid December afternoon, I felt the need of a shower but not because of the weather.  I turned on the news and of course there was our latest shooting -- our uninterrupted, obsessive flood of words searching for relevance, desperate to package and reissue those code words to express and stimulate the sentiments of  their constituency:  high power, high caliber, military style, assault weapon, semi-automatic yada, yada and all the rest.  That real modern assault weapons are small caliber and lower power than hunting rifles doesn't matter since the words are not there to inform but to frighten, to enlist and to frame reality to further the mission of each and every disparate group of activists.  We'll hear all about checks and shows and magazine size and even "style"  before we know who did what to whom why and with which.  It can wait until we're done preaching.

Who are the shooters and how many are there and why did they do it?  Is there really an increase in gun violence or is there a concentration of focus?  What kind of gun control would have helped if these are Jihadis?  is a group of three likely to have the same modus and motives as the disturbed and suicidal teenager?  We don't know anything as of the time I'm writing it, but we know what to say: gun grabber, gun nut, high caliber, high velocity, armed citizen, gun control, military style, armor piercing waiting period gun show background check registration full metal jacket.  It doesn't matter except to Pavlov..

I heard a young woman on TV the other night yelling about the police.  "They've got sniper guns! They're using sniper guns.!"  They were tear gas launchers, in fact but it doesn't matter, Neither side is talking to anyone but themselves and in a language of their own and no substantive dialog is possible, nor is there even a common language.

And meantime people are dead and bleeding and we don't know who or why or how many..  Meantime the salesmen on all sides are offering their packaged wares.  Want facts? have suggestions?  Want to know what's happening?  Hell no, you gun nut, gun grabber, freedom hater, murderer!

WHEN “PRO-LIFE” MEANS PRO DEATH

By (O)CT(O)PUS

The title of this post is borrowed from an article originally written in 1998 by Mary Lou Greenberg , who reports on assaults by pro-life extremists. She describes this bomb attack on the All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham Alabama that killed a security guard and severely injured a nurse:

“As I held in my hand the sharp slivers of glass that were now the only remains of the shattered windows, my eye was drawn to a metal object in the debris. It was a nail, a small, sharp spike two inches long (…) Just as this anti-personnel bomb at the clinic was intended to rip apart bodies, so too was it meant to penetrate people's minds and emotions with a chilling message: If you provide abortions, if you work at clinics or go to them as clients, you will be a target!”

This court case, Fargo Women's Health Organization v. Lambs of Christ, tells another aspect of the story. Established in 1981, the clinic offered routine gynecological services including first trimester abortions. For years, anti-abortion protestors held peaceful demonstrations in the vicinity of the clinic but conditions changed in 1991 when protestors stormed the clinic and occupied the building.

In the ensuing months, demonstrators jostled patients at the front door, struck and pushed escorts, confronted patients in the parking lot, vandalized cars, and blocked public roadway access. As a result, the clinic was effectively blockaded, preventing patients and staff from entering or leaving the building. Protestors called these blockades "rescues" and vowed to close the clinic outright.

Away from the clinic, the situation turned nastier when protestors followed staffers to their homes, to stores, even to the airport. For five months, protesters stalked a doctor at her home. Before dawn, “as many as 30 protesters” gathered on the front lawn, shouted, honked car horns, and blocked the driveway to prevent the doctor and her family from leaving. Protestors vandalized the doctor’s property and picketed the school where her daughter attended. Other staffers were similarly harassed; a car full of protestors stalked the daughter of a clinic volunteer.

Similar incidents spawned more litigation. In another noteworthy case, Bray V. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, several abortion clinics sued in District Court. In hindering women as a class from seeking an abortion, they argued, anti-abortion protesters had violated their equal protection rights. Although a District Court ruled in favor of the clinics, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling in a 5 to 4 decision that defied logic:

“Opposition to abortion cannot reasonably be presumed to reflect gender-based intent, Justice Scalia wrote [my bold], because there are common and respectable reasons for opposing abortion other than a derogatory view of women.”

In other words, a protestor’s right to free speech trumps a woman’s right to free and unfettered access to reproductive health services.  In Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo v. Williams, Joshua Wilson describes the "ideological dilemma" when two legal concepts come into conflict forcing both sides of the argument to decide which rights deserve priority over others. For pro-choice liberals, the strategy is to protect abortion rights by limiting disruptive demonstrations near reproductive health facilities. For pro-life conservatives, their strategy is the reverse: To obstruct access to abortions by expanding their traditionally narrow views regarding freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Depending upon on the issue, it seems, civil liberties are in the eyes of the beholder.

On January 13, 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Bray V. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic.  Two months later, on March 10, 1993 to be exact, Dr. David Gunn was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist in Pensacola Florida :

David Gunn, 47, was shot three times in the back after he got out of his car at the Pensacola Women's Medical Services clinic, according to Pensacola police (…)

Last summer in Montgomery, Ala., an old-fashioned "wanted" poster of Gunn was distributed at a rally for Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry, AP said. The poster included a picture of Gunn, his home phone number and other identifying information.

Eight months later, on August 19, 1993, a pro-life extremist shot Dr. George Tiller in both arms. It was the first attempt on his life and the first of many threats throughout his career. Not only did Dr. Tiller survive the attack, he returned to the clinic the next day to administer to his patients.

In response to a pattern of arson, bombings, murder, and intimidation at abortion clinics, the U.S. Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) on May 26, 1994. More than a dozen states followed suit by imposing buffer zones around clinics and homes, prohibiting threats to personnel, banning telephone harassment, and imposing noise regulations. On March 17, 1997, the case of Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo v. Williams reached the U.S. Supreme Court. This time, the Justices voted 6-3 to uphold the buffer zones.

Despite legislative initiatives to date to stop the violence, there have been:

8 assassinations and over a dozen shootings,

180 arson and 37 bomb attacks,

100 butyric acid attacks including multiple attacks on the same clinic on the same day,

654 letters threatening anthrax attacks.

These are not the actions of a mere handful of lone extremists within the pro-life movement. These statistics imply the existence of a pervasive and organized network of accomplices working underground and nationwide. Scott Roeder, the man charged with the murder of Dr. George Tiller, agrees. From his jail cell last week, Roeder said: "I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal ..."

Meanwhile, what about our vaunted rights of free speech and free assembly? How can we claim these civil liberties as hallmarks of freedom when thousands of reproductive health professionals and their clients are forced to endure bullying, harassment, intimidation, and threats of personal injury every day? Which is worse: The threat of international terrorism from abroad, or the threat of pro-life terrorism at home that can strike at any moment.

You Are What You Eat

Whew, it's over - the 120 mile drive in a storm on a road full of drunks, the overcooked turkey, the heartburn. Don't get me wrong, I have little enough family left and I don't mind seeing them, but there's nothing casual or relaxed about Thanksgiving and if you're like me, needing to avoid salt and too many calories, it's hard to come away from the table feeling good.

But all this for a somewhat insulting myth about "pilgrims," fleeing tolerance in Holland and what good and brave folks they were -  even the indentured servants not much different from slaves. And sure, those kindly Massachusetts residents who welcomed the great unwashed of Europe and their clouds of deadly viruses and bacteria --  and Bibles, of course.  I just don't think we need a celebration of European conquest and exploitation and religious aggression.  Frankly it means nothing to me at all as a celebration of anything worth celebrating.

But that doesn't stop me from making it feel worthwhile by inserting my own meaning.  I made it a point to eat as much gluten as possible and of course I processed the hell out of everything I could find.  There's very little local or seasonal here at this time of year, but I avoided it when I could. Gimme some of that fructose packed, canned Cranberry sauce and the pumpkin bread I baked sure as hell used canned pumpkins from someplace far, far away.

It's a bold statement about holy foods hipsterism, you see -- the attitude of superiority behind righteous Christians wresting a pristine continent with violence, disease and  self righteousness from its owners.  If I could have gotten away with a frozen Turkey TV dinner or maybe some turkey jerky I would have, but there's no stopping the juggernaut of  commerce and no stopping the annual retail cycle.  You have to feel thankful  for any token resistance you can manage.

My Way or the Highway - Both Roads Lead Nowhere

Guns are dangerous.  I think we can agree on that, but the danger is relative and the danger is situational and site specific.  Ask anyone who lives 40 miles outside of Talkeetna, Alaska what you take with you when you walk out to the outhouse on a Spring morning and the answer will probably include a caution as to the minimum caliber of the weapon. Things are different in Brooklyn, of course. The plumbing is mostly indoors.

Who what and where always factor in the equation and no matter how we like to scoff at the idea that people kill people, it's true.  As long as there are people, there will be murder, criminal recklessness and crimes involving weapons and as long as people die at other people's hands the fear will persist and not in proportion to the actual danger but more to the needs of  activists.  Reality is no more apparent or objective now then it ever was and our time is a time of  propaganda, commercially cultivated outrage and hysteria.

It's de regeur to talk about or demand sensible gun control but specifics too often ignore the lessons of experience.  The most carefully vetted people sometimes do horrible things: take the Chicago cop who shot a man 16 times, apparently for reasons more to do with his failure to comply with demands than to the threat level.  What simple and sensible precautionary measures, what checks and registries will prevent such abuse of public trust?  Are the things we're urged to do effective in solving problems or are they more about elevating anger and the fortunes of certain activists?  Time will tell, but we're not likely to notice.

What about a march for justice that punishes and alienates and infuriates the innocent but can have no effect on justice, the mechanism of which has already charged the offending officer with Murder One?   Is it that it's not a riot or a lynch mob if we do it? Does interfering with justice serve  justice? Who is encouraging us even to ask, and who is called a racist for not following some group with all the answers?  What horrible crimes do we ignore every day because no organization's agenda is served?

And then there's the guy who shoots up a Planned Parenthood office?  Is the Evangelical Crusade, so effective in convincing people that all abortion is murder and the killing of  doctors and nurses a moral obligation part of the equation, or is it just guns and the lack of sensible controls?  Will background checks or gun registration have any effect on screening out some Good, God fearing Christian on a Crusade he passionately believes to be moral?  The cop he murdered - should we fry that pig's bacon?  Is there some grotesque contradiction between our dogmas and civilization's needs?
Is there some grave sickness in our culture or rather the cluster of conflicting cultures we call America?  We can't talk about that easily lest someone accuse us of "blaming the victim" even when we're all victims.

The passion for justice is as powerful as it is relative and that passion is as likely to advocate murder, to bypass a functioning Justice System as it is to favor emotional justice or revenge.  With all the quasi-demonic howling that dominates the American dialog, who is actually seeking a better world and who is merely pushing a vain dogma?  Who is singling out a single factor as the only important one?  Who is trying to limit possibilities, to shout down reasoned debate in the dominance game of  narrow causes and powerful organizations?

Guns are dangerous.  Passions are dangerous, marching mobs are dangerous, simplistic rhetoric and moral conviction are dangerous -- people are dangerous because we recognize no community of interest.  When it comes to a better Country, it's always my way or the highway you Communist, Racist, Fascist, Muslim -- you White, Black, Hispanic, Christian Atheist Liberal bastard!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Hey, remember when Barack Obama was accused of "paling around with terrorists?"  Apparently that's one of the many things that are OK when Republicans do it.  Ted Cruz - you know that Canadian born son of a Castro Communist has been praising a leader of an anti-abortion group responsible for several murders and of planting bombs. Troy Newman recently deported from Australia as an unwelcome extremist is a great leader says Candidate Cruz -- the kind of guy we need more of in the US.  

Of course Fox News has long been a major fan of Vladimir Putin, the crooked and probably homicidal  Russian Dictator who has no problem conquering and annexing sovereign nations when he can get away with it. He's also the kind of leader we need, or so they keep saying.  It's just really hard to see the radical right, by which I mean the mainstream Republican party and their propaganda organizations  as anything but dangerous and indeed murderous terrorists.

On Thanksgiving day we have as much if not more to be disgusted with than we have to be thankful for.  For my part I'm grateful that we have an opportunity to reject the kind of  ancient evil that has brought us mass murder, tyranny of the worst kind and has undermined liberty, justice and anything resembling humanist values for most of history, posing as good, posing as Godly while cursing the very things we were supposed to be thankful for.