Weapons of Mass Disinformation

The more I read and the more I research, the more reasons I find to detest The Christian Right. Certainly, I think they're entitled to their opinions, but I don't see how Religious Righters can read selected portions of the Bible and still support President Bush with unwaivering tenacity. The problems begin when you start to buy into his whole "God-talks-to-me", "evangelical", "Finally! A Christian President!" image. For some reason, this nation has decided to expect that family values and moral responsibility are chiefly important to Republicans. That is, we would expect to hear phrases like "morality", "family", and "values" from the Conservatives' camp much more often than we would from the Liberals'.

The larger issue is generalization. When people generalize something, there's nothing inherently wrong. In fact, sometimes generalization is necessary for the sake of argument. But when you start generalizing, you eventually start to pidgeonhole people. Indeed, when someone says "Democrat", certain hot-button issues are called to mind. These are issues that we have learned to associate with the whole mire of Democrats in this country. The same holds true for Republicans. We like to have folks fit into neatly organized categories. If you are conservative, then you must be pro-life, anti-gay marriage, anti-stem cell, "laissez-faire" and the rest of it. If you are liberal, then you must be pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-stem cell, larger government, etc. But people don't fit into these nice, neat categories. Or at least they shouldn't. If you're a Republican, yes, you should feel free to oppose capital punishment. If you're a Democrat, of course you should feel free to oppose abortion. There are such things as liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Remember after the 2004 elections were over? Everyone was pleading for our nation to come together and do away with this rigid partisan polarity. What happened to that?

We even generalize the hot-button issues themselves. After all, isn't it a little ridiculous to say that you are always, always, always against abortion? When did all abortion circumstances become the same? Isn't the issue a little more ideologically, relationally, and economically complex than that?

Let's not forget the absolute moral obscenity that is war. Tell me....Who would Jesus bomb? Also, we didn't find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Let me say that again. We didn't find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Have I mentioned that there as many as 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians as a result of this war? We do not live in a theocracy.

Christian Lefters, let's start talking FACTS. And let's start talking facts IN CHURCH. I don't want to hear about "family values" unless you're willing to talk about universal health care. I don't want to hear about the infallibility of free markets until you're ready to start talking about ridiculous Pharmeaceutical profits and Oil profits that are simply gross. I don't want to hear "pray for our troops" unless I hear "pray for our enemies too". God loves Iraqis. He loves Saddam Hussein. He loves Osama bin Laden. "What would Jesus do?" Would Jesus care about politics? I think he certainly did. I think he still does.

And if we start talking POLITICS in CHURCH, you can expect to be met with much criticism. People will say "we are instigating division" and that we're going to cost our churches many pledge units. We will see personell cutbacks, downsized church budgets. We have a lot to lose. Then again, what good is it to gain the whole world but lose one's soul? Mull that over for a while.