“I believe homosexuality is a sin because I’m a Bible-believing Christian, I believe it’s a sin,”he says and yes, that's just the sort of thing Republicans like to pass off as reason and package this fear of retributive and divine bogeymen with fear of communism and common decency like Wall Street packages bad loans.
Sin, Mr. Cain, is not crime, it's a tool used to tyrannize the mind and because the sin of one frame of reference is not the sin of another and because we are a government of laws and not of prophets and because those laws are designed to protect liberty and property and not to protect your tangled web of beliefs or promote them or ennoble them or sanctify them or elevate them to the status of law and permit them to persecute others: and because sir, you are a man like the rest of us, neither better nor worse nor more to be obeyed because of your beliefs, you should save them for Sunday and leave the rest of us the hell alone with your damned arrogant beliefs. No man is elevated by standing on Bibles.
Preacher Cain of course would be a good choice for the GOP at this point -- evidence that they're not really racists and have only set the dogs on that other black man because he's not Christian enough or as concerned with the things God hates like Medicare or the Minimum wage. A different shade of black man and one more easily used as a tool to get things back to the way they used to be when there was a place for everyone and everyone was in his place.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteYes, that man is a masterpiece. Because certain folk believe what they believe, the rest of us had better believe and act accordingly. Or at least act accordingly, whether we believe or not. Scarcely anything is more insidious about these rightists than their little meme about "Teh Gay" being a choice:
Oh, how they love that word. Everything's a choice: are you a hundred years old, very ill, and in need of health-care insurance? Why, we want to harness the market's power to give you MANY, many choices! Carrying a non-viable child whose birth will result in your own extinction? Choose life! Sleeping under a bridge in the cold? Well, your choices put you there. Etc.
If you interpret this claim of theirs through the right filter, sort of like viewing the moon through a big telescope with the proper amount of dimming to bring out its detail, the true ugliness of it becomes apparent.
So I would draw things out as follows: the obvious point is that you can't do anything about "how you're built" -- if you're drawn to people of the same sex, that's who you're drawn to. Even most dim-bulb right-wingers sort-of-kind-of understand that point, at least fitfully. So what our dear narrowly fanatical brothers and sisters gli uomini e le donne della destra are saying is that you can choose whether or not to ACT on those inclinations. If your psycho-sexual makeup doesn't suit their interpretation of the Bible, you need to choose not to live in accordance with that makeup. You need to reject your own nature, your own instincts, and instead act with all the courage of other people's convictions. Otherwise, it's plagues of locusts and cataclysms for all mankind, apparently.
Now, we know that to some extent civilization depends upon the repression and/or re-routing of certain instincts – the instinct for violence, mainly, but not only that. This is a basic truth brought to us by the likes of Hobbes, Freud, and Nietzsche, each in his own way. But what makes the religious Right so insidious and destructive is that they would apply this unfortunate truth in the most brutal and fundamentally illiberal manner possible, using their holy book as the means of repression and torturing their fellow citizens on the rack of frustrated passion. They seek not, as in Freud's case, to loosen the restrictions that make civilization such a power so that people can still be civilized without being miserable, but rather to tighten those restrictions until everybody who doesn't go along with their belief system chokes on them.
There is no greater threat to the ideal of a Jeffersonian America than these ignorant bigots with their incessant demands on free humanity. I'm for restraint and civility in most things, but when the fanatics yap, the only response they will have from me is Blake's fiery rejoinder:
"Sooner strangle an infant in its crib than nurse unacted desires."
For a holier than thou Christian, Mr. Cain is NOT his brother's keeper.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I see a new GOP evangelist who is a member of any minority which is otherwise vilified (subtly or overtly) by the GOP, my first thought is always that selling out must be very, very profitable. In order to embrace the party who is known for their unilateral opposition to women's rights, gay rights, and affirmative action programs meant to make up for centuries of oppression, any minority (or female) needs to abandon the interests of the group they belong to, and that just boggles my mind.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that every member of a minority group must fall in line with the generalized best interests of their group, but it does seem to me that if we could get a better consensus among the various groups who suffer some degree of oppression under a conservative social model, we'd have a majority instead of a bunch of minorities.
Where do I begin? I thought that Sarah Palin was a scary person but Herman Cain is definitely in the same league.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he recognizes that he is being used. Maybe he doesn't mind as long as the payoff is 15 minutes of fame. He's the perfect poster boy for the Right; a black man with business credentials who opposes government spending, supports big business, and waves his Bible while advocating for bigotry. Gee, makes me want to run right out and sign up as a Republican; hell, I may even join the Tea Party.Then again maybe not, after all, I have chores to do.
I think the major flaw in the GOP playbook is that their plays don't work!
ReplyDeleteWhen Obama was running for president who did they trot out to oppose him? The old white guy, war hero, pretty wife, staunch conservative to appeal to the rich, bigoted, powermonging white guys and a female "rogue" to show how progressive they are. (Couldn't quite bring themselves to put a person of color in there - afraid Jindal, Cain and the others are backing the wrong horse if they think they can move up the GOP ladder).
They put Steele out front for a while just to "prove" they are not racists and then brought him down as soon as they felt they had made their point.
But who's buying all this really? They are trying to attract the minority and independent vote but how many of those folks who voted for Obama in '08 are going over to the dark side? Do they really think a few token gestures can turn the tide?
They managed to tilt the House at mid-term but mid-term is a notorious time for upsets. Just gives them two years to further alienate not only their target voters but also their base.
All those old retired conservatives are not too happy with the GOP for trying to screw with their SS and medicare.
The GOP will promise anything to get their puppets to perform. Cain is apparently under the deluded notion that if the GOP takes control they will outlaw all the "sins" in the Bible and he will get to be part of it.
I think he should be having a conversation with Michael Steele and ask him how all that worked out for him!
Because we're a Christian nation, by golly! Sin should be legislated against! Which is why we need monuments to the Ten Commandments on every courthouse! Because the source of all our laws is the Ten Commandments!
ReplyDeleteWell, except for "Thou shalt keep no other gods before me." I guess we can't... we can still throw rocks at Muslims, though, right?
(Notice it isn't "there are no other gods"? Or even "worship no other gods"? Just "don't worship them more than me"... hmmm...)
"Thou shalt not kill!" There's one! Right there! Murder is bad!
And... and... "bear false witness!"
Umm... "shalt not steal!" That's three...
And then there's "honor thy father and..." ...oh, wait... no, there isn't...
"Bear false witness!" That's like... perjury, right? OK, yeah, but it isn't a crime to do it in the streets, though...
"Keep the sabbath day holy!" You can't buy beer, so that keeps... it... holy... um... And you can go one county over, like my neighbor does... so... um...
You know, it's looking like there ain't but three of 'em that we "based our laws one." 3 out of ten. 30%.
And 30% won't even get you a passing score on the GED. Although it might explain the types of people who make that claim.
"I left that Democratic plantation a long time ago---and I ain't going back." --Herman Cain
ReplyDeleteWhy that's a shame, Mr. Cain, perhaps if you had stayed with the Democratic Party, you would have been elected to the Senate or even the presidency by now instead of rescuing pizza parlors from bankruptcy.