What I'm Actually Thinking, Without Quite So Many Jokes.

Naturally, I expected the propaganda machine to fire into high gear when the weather got warmer, so I shouldn't be surprised about the immense media f*ckfest regarding the death of President Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Tha's right, I wrote "f*uckfest," Dudes, and please do have the decency to note that I show respect in referring to him as President Ronald Wilson Reagan, as well as not referring to the media orgy/worship the week of his death as "The Reagan F*ckfest."

See HERE. Pay attention. What sort of sickened me about the f*uckfest was the distortion of simple facts - and it was everywhere. Like the claim that Reagan's popularity ratings were the highest of any president we've ever had when he left office.

As one savvy individual who wrote to The Washington Post noted: Mr. Reagan's popularity rating when his final term was over was lower than Bill Clinton's when Mr. Clinton left office. The Post didn't dispute the writer's claims. But, hey, that just goes to show how biased the media is, right?

We continually heard all about Reagan's optimism, how he inspired optimism. We kept hearing the O word throughout the week.

Optimism? Shit: I've never heard of a mainstream American political philosophy more pessimistic about basic human nature, and the nature of their fellow Americans who didn't feel as they did, than the G.O.P had in the '80s - unless you count the political philosophy they had in the 1990s, with their constant harrassment of the Clintons. But I'll save the Clinton subject for another post.

Yeah, sure, okay: maybe Mr. Reagan was the most optimistic guy ever to have breathed air. However: the things the Republican party stated, and did, in the '80s constantly reinforced their sacred notion that most people, when given the chance, will always piss all over you if you're a rich businessman. The groups just itching to screw you over were women, first and foremost, followed by almost anybody under 25 years of age; most African-Americans; really most people with brown skin; most homosexuals, of course; athiests and agnostics; anyone with AIDS; anyone who was an alarmed M.D. or health worker treating people with AIDS; Democrats as a group; mothers accepting any sort of governmental aid; most college students, college teachers, or college administrators; most people who hang out at libraries; people who still liked Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and their general policies; the homeless, and those wanting funds to fight homelessness not officially affiliated with a major religious organization; anyone not affiliated with the Republican party interested in the Iran-Contra scandal, as well as anyone not affiliated with the Republican party, in general; children who relied on school lunch programs; people who relied on anything that wasn't yet privatized, unless you were using the infrastructure our grandparents built to make huge quantities of money; anyone incarcerated except for the unrepentant Watergate scandal felons; the Watergate scandal felons who were sincerely repentant; anyone thinking that automatic assault weapons aren't a great idea in an impoverished urban or suburban environment where there are a lot of broke or just plain angry kids watching violent movies and playing violent video games; anyone who actually has major concerns about the impoverishment of other Americans (having concerns about U.S.S.R. impoverishment was okay because it showed you weren't a Commie); most people having major sympathetic concerns about anyone physically challenged, or their rights; most people who think public television or public radio is a good idea; and anyone, really, who had voted for that poor Jimmy Carter fellow.

This list goes on from there, but let me tell you: I think capitalism is fine, as long as it isn't based on this nonsensical notion that became such a paradigm among conservatives of "economic Darwinism," a really incredibly shortsighted and stupid misuse and misapplication of Darwinian theories describing the natural world. Earlier, the Nazis also made a somewhat similar sort of mistake.

And, all the while, (and this is what brings my point up to the present date): with a sort of perverse hypocrisy certain Republican supporters were laboring day and night to get "Creation Science" taught at the public schools, right along with theories regarding evolutionary science. "Creation Science" is, of course, the bizarre belief that our Holy Bible was meant to be interpreted as physical law, just as much as it's taught to be spiritual truth.

This, of course, is why Jesus used so many parables: Hey, Christ wasn't using symbolism, as you nonbelievers believe: He was being sort of like a New York Times reporter is supposed to be, and spoke nothing but facts, facts, facts, facts. The Good Samaritan story was just J.C. repeating an actual incident, ya see, and no allegory was intended... The Savior was like Jack Webb. Just the facts, Ma'am.

And that's why Christ was always saying stuff like "The Kingdom of God is like or is as.." and "The Son of Man can be likened onto..." Right? It's because God never uses symbolism, so Genesis and the entire Bible should never be taken as symbolic, see? So, I guess, nothing in the Book of Revelations should be interpreted symbolically. Well, ha ha ha, you amazing dumbf*cks.

And so now we have this trouble we have today with some people in the Islamic faith, who also have a difficult time with their Holy Writings meaning anything other than what it literally says. What a wonder.

You fundamentalists, no matter what religion you ascribe to and bully people with, remind me very much of Chairman Mao's murderous "Cultural Revolution," where the government forbade the reading of Aesop's Fables. You know why the ban was imposed?

Because it's widely known that animals don't talk, that's why. Aesop's Fables, you see, was some sort of lie under Maoism because the primary point of Aesop, you see, or at least the ultimate result of Aesop, you see, is to mislead childen into the false, middle class, counter-revolutionary impression that animals speak human language! This was accordng to that Godless Communist Mao Tse-Tung. So, the hardline Christians, as well as all the other hardline True Believers of any faith who can't use their heads and who can't even take a f*cking joke - they can take great pride in the fact that their thinking is similar to one of history's great tyrants.

Fundamentalism often strips and denies the value of poetry and allegory. I got into an argument with a fundamentalist friend, in the 1980s, because she was offended by my claim that the movie "E.T." was any sort of Christian allegory, and that this was probably why the movie was such a favorite of hers, and moved her so much. Which it did. I was attempting to "reach out," in my "wordly" manner, but she wasn't having any of it.

She was offended by my suggestion that a very successful Hollywood Jew might make a movie about a wound-healing, miracle-performing super creature from outer space who dies, has followers, and comes miraculously back to life after being chased by the government. My noting that E.T. ascends into the sky at the end, is found dead with his arms open as if in a crucified position, and even lets his followers "walk on water" by letting them fly with him on their bicycles was too much for her. My observing that E.T. tells little Drew Barrymore to "be good," and that he'll be "right here" while pointing to her head, or that E.T.'s heart glows from his chest in the Roman Catholic tradition, while he rises from being thought dead, coming out of the back of a van as if from a tomb with a white blanket wrapped around his head and body, like a cloak - these observations, somehow, offended my fundamentalist friend.

She didn't like my suggestion that "E.T." might be one of the director's countless nods to the Goyem world that he understands, or at least respects, the so-called "nicer" aspects of Christianity, and the emotional appeal of the more benevolent side of that general faith. But, after all, E.T. doesn't look like Jesus Christ, although we don't really know precisely what Jesus Christ looked like, nor did Jesus Christ want his followers to tell people what he looked like. Everyone knows that Jesus H. Christ had blonde hair, blue eyes, and was pretty, pretty, pretty. That's just, somehow, fundamental. So, that was her attitude.

Anyway. So, I guess things like blueprints of engineering projects, buildings, and machines aren't in any way useful to someone building or navigating something, because it isn't the actual thing, itself. I once heard Alan Watts discussing religious fundamentalists like this: they're sort of like a simpleton who climbs up onto a sign on a road, when where he really needs, and wants, to go is to where the sign is pointing to.

But, hey, you know, letters themselves are symbols, so unless we want to use only printed letters to communicate, we'd best stop using them altogether, correct? It's an either/or situation. For or against. Letters or actual speech, and no room for compromise.

Yet this limited viewpoint of the world, and what religion is for, has been encouraged by the Republicans, more and more, the older I get, and they're often getting frightened Dems to chime in with them. So, nowadays, we're giving tax dollars to religious schools, at the G.O.P's orders. Tax money for religious indoctrination!... You know what Jesus would do, since you "basics only" hardline *ssholes want the rest of us to be asking that question regarding every situation we encounter?

Jesus would PUKE, people. We're at a crossroads in America, to use a popular cliche... and we're definitely not going to survive the terrorists by resisting their fundamentalism with our own brand of simplistic (and inaccurate) thinking about these things. But the types of hardline Judeo-Christians I'm bitching about aren't really following Christ, anyway. They're worshipping St. Paul. We know what Jesus Christ had to say about some of the people who "will come in My name," do we not? He warned his followers to be wary of them.

SO, if you're really so damned literalist, you'll actually read your Bible, instead of harrassing women seeking contraception, and you'll stop evoking Christ's name every stupid chance you get to strike fear into your political opposition. It's a "character issue." Yeah, maybe Satan does use scripture to make his arguments - but which of us are actually being "Satanic"? Me, or you hardline believers who refuse to see your own need for abstract thinking regarding moral concepts? Maybe it's you guys. Think about it. Or, at least, maybe you're being used. OR maybe you don't actually have faith in what you say you do, so you have to prove something, all the time, in wordly, concrete, yet destructive ways, and to make a lot of trouble for people who don't really deserve it, as you're doing that.

I'll get back to the media f*ckfest regarding President Reagan in my next posting. And, uh.. sorry for the tangent.

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original contents copyright 2004 by the author. any likeness to persons, living or deceased, without satiric intent, is both unintentional and a tremendous coincidence.