From time to time I go to the religion section of the Huffington Post to see what the religiously impaired are up to. Given the horror of the assassination of police in Dallas, and the brutal killings of African American civilians by police in the past few days, the religious leader take on the issue and what needs to be done about it took center stage. You can read the article here, albeit, it's hardly enlightening.
This one comment from a pastor caught my eye:
"Dear Lord today please protect black men who are driving, selling, walking, riding bikes, working or just breathing,” "
Naturally it really tweaked my hump to read that. Appeal to the Lord to protect black men, because if you don't beg god it doesn't know what to do? Because it has the power to do that, but was too busy over the past few days, months, years, helping some balls players win some games to intervene and stop an innocent passenger from being blown away in cold blood at 18 inches? Why not just do the old "our thoughts and prayers are with the victims" nonsense that they all spew as easily as saying "God bless you" after a sneeze and leave it at that as though that platitudinous religio-gibberish means anything.
The fact is we are a sick society. Racism, white privilege, political extremism, xenophobia, a culture that sees guns and violence as the answer, the means to an end, for everything - this is our nation's prevailing mentality. We have become the example of what civilization should never become; the obscenity that every other industrialized nation points to in horror.
So naturally I'll be asked "That's all well and good...but what do we do about it?" I haven't the foggiest idea. I'm not sure it's even fixable anymore, our ills having been either ignored or embraced for so long they may now be terminal. But what I do know is two things:
1) that spewing religious platitudes, praying to a make believe sky daddy , or imploring people to "hold on a little longer", as though there is a fix afoot is patently inane and less than useless. And...
2) Pogo was right: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
3 comments:
I think should the Dems take it all in Nov., there could be a big reckoning. It's the Repubs greatest fear as there goes their ideas of religious liberty, religious anything for many many decades if ever. The Repubs are losing it, jumping up and down like chimpanzees and some camels in display mode Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo! lol
First, I have missed your words. Everyone should get time off and you are old enough.
I have never heard anyone tell us what "thoughts and prayers" they are really "sending." I can guess the thoughts: I feel bad for you. But the prayers, if they are to go to some omnipotent being had better be something a lot more useful than "give them the strength to endure" and be something like: "since you can do anything, make it undone, bring back the lives lost, and let everyone know you did it."
I don't know what to say. My grasp of the English language is failing to articulate my feelings. It seems to me that to criticize America, its governance, its Constitution, its religion and its ideology is so offensive that Americans as children are indoctrinated into a mindset that blinds them to the flaws. And let's be honest there are flaws. We should all be on a path of continuous improvement, but such a radical idea only makes the nutjobs more delusional in their desperation.
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