You Mean... ME?

Anyone who has been reading my blog posts, all one of you, knows that I’m certainly not angry about anything. As hard as it is to believe, my other reader called a recent post “so angry”? Can you imagine? Where do they come up with this stuff?

I guess they think I’m angry because the soon-to-be-former Administration, fueled by fanatical right-wing zeal, has run our country into the ground with a needless war, over a Trillion dollar projected budget deficit, hateful anti-gay referendums, trashed our economy, trampled our right to privacy and taken away our freedoms in the name of freedom (huh?), placed themselves above the Geneva Convention by torturing prisoners and going to the mat to defend that “right”, maniacally supporting Israel no matter what they do, failing to get Bin Laden, radicalizing more Muslims toward terror and last but certainly not least, doing everything they can think of to lead us toward self-fulfilling their dangerous apocalyptic prophecies/fantasies. Angry? What’s to be angry about?

Case in point; I am no longer angry about the tithing I was forced to pay to the Mormon Church when I was nine. It was pointed out that nine year olds don’t really have anything that doesn’t actually belong to their parents. The same person said that they teach their children to give some of their money to charity to learn the joy of unselfishness.

So if, as was just pointed out, it isn’t really theirs anyway, what did they learn? Ignoring the arrogant assumption in that statement that if the money doesn’t go to the Mormon Church, then it isn't charity, I'll point out that I do give to charity. I also did when I was nine, but I’m not asking for any of that back, since I did it that with my own free will. It’s interesting that they jumped on the tithing comment when the point of the post was really that we need to start taxing churches.

Then I’m told that I need to meet some of the true Holy Men, the ones who believe in the one true God, then all will become right in my Universe. Interestingly, not ALL are Mormons, though the teller has never met one who wasn’t Mormon, but he’s told they exist. I quote, “If you'd take the time to know these people too, you'd quit debating the morality of this that and the other and join their cause.”

Holy cow, why do I even bother with people who think like this? First, I’m not debating the morality of anything. My moral compass is very clear, no need to debate that. Of course, this comes from the assumption that we cannot have a moral compass without God or some “holy man” to give it to us. No, I have not debated morality, but rather, I have spoken out when my government does outrageously immoral things.

Insert deep sigh here. I’m not sure why I bother writing these posts. There are so many stinkin’ bloggers around and they/we all think that they/we have something to say. I’m not sure why any of us subject ourselves to this, All that ever comes of any of it is that those who agree tell us how smart we are and those who disagree tell us how messed up we are. Do hearts and minds ever get changed? I doubt it.

When my wife reads these posts or hears of some of my email exchanges, it is always followed with a heavy sigh and a groan, even though she generally agrees with my point of view. She knows what I’m still having trouble reconciling; that it’s all really rather pointless. I know that too, but there’s that other little voice in my head, the one of my great grandchild asking, “Why didn’t you do something before it came to this?”

“I tried honey, I really did, but everyone thought Global Climate Change was just an Al Gore PowerPoint thingie to get Government money under the guise of research. I spoke out but they kept making wars, kept spending beyond our means and overpopulating a planet that was already stretched to its limits. I guess the planet showed them in the long run, I was just hoping there would be something left for you. I tried and failed, but at least I’m not angry about it.”

The Ultimate Chuck Norris Joke

President Elect Obama has promised a new way of doing business in Washington by working together in a spirit of bi-partisanship. I think that's a wonderful and productive policy and all indications are that he is very serious about fulfilling that promise. While I applaud and support the President-elect in this view, I am very pleased that I, as a private citizen, can be as blatantly liberal as I please.

I find it a bit amusing that the left has been critical that he is too close to the middle, while right-wing idiots like Chuck Norris are near apoplectic over his ‘refusal to govern from the center’. He is afraid that Obama will be too much like Clinton, who brought us eight years of relative peace, the greatest economic expansion in history and the first balanced budget in many years. God, that would be awful.

Of course, this is the same simpleton that challenges the President-elect to "protect American life" while supporting the useless war in Iraq and the thousands of dead Americans it has produced. Not to mention the countless other Bush Administration policies that have made the world more dangerous for Americans.

With typical right-wing arrogance that assumes only they understand the Constitution and the intentions of the founding fathers, he quotes Thomas Jefferson. “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government".

Of course, Jefferson was obviously talking about abortion, not things like the death penalty and treasonous Presidential acts like manufacturing evidence to start a religious oil war. How convenient that religion and the needs of the oil companies converged when they each owned equal shares of the Administration. 9/11 provided a perfect opportunity, proving that God must indeed have a plan.

Here we come to the heart of my problem with the right-wing. They simply leave no room for intelligent discourse and for thinking Americans to forward a rational agenda. Their religious agenda is dangerous, ignorant and self-fulfilling and as far as I can tell, very un-Christ-like. They are willing to kill anyone in the name of God, oil, justice, freedom, and damned near anything else and yet they are so very concerned about the unborn. The hypocrisy is astounding but if you try to disagree, they'll shout you down. If you try to exercise your freedom of speech discount you by accusing you of being unpatriotic and unappreciative of your freedoms. Explain that one to me.

As a Humanist and recovering Mormon, I had actually reached a point where I was losing my anger over how Mormonism steamrolled through my upbringing and the difficult personal struggle to find my own path. Then came Prop 8 and the Mormon Church’s shameful actions in ‘support of the family’. They violated their tax exempt status by becoming a political, as opposed to a religious organization, while forwarding a hateful and un-Christ-like agenda.

There is an old punch line that goes “Welcome to Utah. Please set your watch back 20 years.” The Mormon Church’s actions regarding Prop 8 easily set the fight against ignorance and intolerance back by 20 years.

Lest I appear to be picking on Mormons, I believe that all religions are dangerous. I mean ALL religions, of every type, from anywhere on the globe. From Muslims who are willing to kill and die in the name of Allah to Christians whose crusades promote hate, war and intolerance, and who believe that freedom of religion only pertains to them. Every religion, from every corner of the world, has dovetailing apocalyptic prophesies that they are determined to self-fulfill and it's reached a point where they are dangerously close to accomplishing that.

I can no longer remain silent in my views about religion and I can no longer remain tolerant of their intolerance. There is simply too much at stake. Between their fatalistic view that it’s all going to end soon so why bother concerning ourselves with Global Climate Change, overpopulation, and myriad other deadly problems, and their determination to fulfill world-ending prophesies, they are now threatening our very survival. God, I hate sounding like some alarmist Bircher extremist! See what they’ve done to me?

A good first step would be to tax the churches. Between the Mormons and Catholics alone we could practically wipe out the national debt, not to mention the TV preachers who are living high off the hog on their tax exempt scams. There is simply no good reason why these organizations should be allowed to take the money of their gullible followers without even contributing to the national coffers.

In these hard economic times, churches are just about the only enterprises still turning a profit. They need to contribute somehow to offset their promotion of an agenda bent our destruction. At the very least, make the Mormons give me back the tithing I was forced to pay when I was nine - with interest, of course.

This was a difficult conclusion for me reach because I know these organizations are made up of many, many good people; people that I believe to be misguided but certainly not evil. My own family, which is made up of mostly very staunch Mormons, are some of the best people I know. I only wish they could see the harm that religions are doing in the name of their particular deities. Even tough guy Norris is probably a decent guy, whom I might even befriend if the opportunity arose. It’s just that he’s wrong.

Religion = Ignorance. Pass it on.