JAYZUS -- I Mean, Hoo Boy

[filkertom]

I've been trying to make nice.

I've been roundly criticized for my tone, because I happen to think that there are a great many FUCKING STUPID people out there, many of whom are trying to impose their superstitions on others. Some of them are also FUCKING EVIL people, who care nothing for the platitudes they hide behind. And I've said so, repeatedly and loudly. And some people thought I was being mean.

Partly in response to that, I wrote "The Here and Now", about religion. And I wrote "For Us All", about bridging the gap -- the gulf -- between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. And I've tried not to go off too much the past few weeks. Especially after the election, because, y'know, there is actual work to be done, and we have to do it together as Americans.

And then Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) opens his big stupid superstitious mouth.

All right, bring it. Bring all of it. And note here that I am not talking about not working to save Inhofe along with the rest of the world. He's a human, presumably an American. I want to save the world for everyone, even those I don't agree with, even those I consider morons. But... why should I be nice to the morons? Why should I speak respectfully to these people, or about these people? Why should ANYBODY have any respect for someone so hideously, dangerously stupid, not merely to himself but to his constituents, his country, his planet?

Basically, why should I try to reason with the unreasonable? And, if you say they aren't unreasonable... FUCKING PROVE IT. Prove it with Inhofe, a goddamn Senator in charge of this stuff for a couple of months yet, a man so very wrong it hurts to think about it. He's waiting for the Invisible Sky Cop to save the day.

I've been hearing theories the past couple of years that some of these yahoos, in it for short-term, bottom-line profit, are effectively hanging on to theirs until the Rapture comes. More and more, I'm agreeing with those theories -- not about the Rapture, but about the yahoos destroying the world thinking they won't have to clean up the mess. And, frankly, I'm not willing to take the chance.

Comments

[valkyrwench.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just...wow. I'm still boggling that people can be that bloody short-sighted.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Oh, for the love of...I'm sorry, I have no words to speak of. "God's up there"? That's his answer? He's abdicating his responsibility without losing his authority.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, I've long been of the opinion that Dumbass' whole exit strategy in Iraq was that it would be cut short by the Second Coming anyway, so I can't say this surprises me. I wish it did, but it doesn't.

[dinpik.livejournal.com]

Yahoos like Inhofe are pissed off because Jesus didn't come back in 2000. So they're determined to make Jesus come back.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Speaking respectfully and having respect are two very, very separate issues.

That guy's just an idiot.

[moony]

What a maroon.

All I can say in response is to go see Happy Feet.

You'll understand when you see it.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a native Oklahoman, please allow me to apologize for my state having produced this moronic little douchebag.

[warinbear.livejournal.com]

I am unreasonably gratified to see that the only association the man made between himself and Christians was the word 'God.' (Well, in that interview segment, anyway.) Christians [1] have enough of a bad rep already without more vocal-minority idiots weighing in.

[1] I use the word 'Christian' to mean 'someone who follows the teachings of Christ,' as opposed to 'Churchian,' or 'someone who follows the teachings of the Church.' See if you can guess which category I put myself in.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

There is a good reason for making every effort to remain calm and respectful even with people who quite rightly piss you off so much that you can't see anything but a red haze. The radical right are better at argument-by-screaming-insults than we are. When we descend to their level of debate, a large chunk of the country, who are dangerously clueless but whose votes determine the outcome of elections, think they are more entertaining and therefore they "win" the debate, at least to the extent of getting those votes. We need to develop our own careful patterns of rhetoric, and the patterns we can succeed in rescuing the country with are the ones that make us look calm and reasonable while they look like the screeching idiots they are.

It is also dangerous to hold the enemy in too much contempt. The ones who run the show are insane, many of them are evil, but they are not stupid, and when we keep telling ourselves they are stupid, we leave ourselves unprepared for their political tactics, which are fiendishly clever. And one of their cleverest tactics is to continually sucker us into playing the game by their rules which they have stacked in their favor.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I would agree, except... last week's election -- y'know, the one we won? -- puts a big monkey wrench into that theory.

I maintain that the biggest enemy of all, even more than the evil fucks, is the mainstream media, who are so tightly wedded to them that they wouldn't know how to report fairly anymore given the chance. Oh, wait, that's right -- they've always had the chance, but their little personal well-being and perqs are more important than the fucking truth.

And holding them in contempt and considering them morons does not mean not being aware of their positions of power and their cleverness. One does not turn one's back on a cornered rabid beast. My point is, neither does one talk to the beast in the hopes of convincing it not to attack.

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that he doesn't represent all of us, or even necessarily _most_ of us. He just happens to hold public office and can get airtime. I will point out that the recently disgraced Ted Haggard, for all his hypocritical lack of civility to homosexuals did publicly support efforts to combat global warming. Nobody gets _everything_ right (which is not an excuse, just an observation). "Then God said to them 'Be fruitful and multiply;fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'" "Having dominion over" doesn't mean to abuse and defile it- it means to take care of it. If we don't behave in a manner that _preserves_ the land, the sea, and the critters we've been given to take care of as the precious resources they are we're disregarding the FIRST commandment that God gave us (this assumes a Christian or Jewish worldview) and why he should count on God to bail us out when we disobey the FIRST command he ever gave us is beyond me. He's a selective reader, shortsighted, and a moron to boot.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Now, y'see, that's a reasonable interpretation, to my mind. Very rational, doesn't preclude God, doesn't require his constant presence.

It just struck me, reading your comment, that there are so very many people out there who want God to micromanage their lives -- and I mean, the ones who pray (really pray) their kids come home safe from a date, who pray for their team to win, who pray that the overdue notice from the bank will be a couple of days late or the biopsy will be negative or they'll hit the lottery or they won't get pregnant despite that wild weekend in Tahoe or the car will make it until payday despite the billowing purple smoke coming out of the A/C vents. And perhaps there's even something of the mythology in that: every time God left people to do their own thing, they ended up going so overboard in the debauchery department that He had to start smiting everything in sight....

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

The best comment on this that I've seen (http://www.idrewthis.org/d/20050311.html)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Oh, good one.

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

And our 'journalists' give him airtime.

I suppose at least he serves as a horrible warning.

[dragonscholar.livejournal.com]

I love your icon.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

What warinbear and tigertoy said. Also, I notice the article was slanted so as to favour the idea that when this idiot said "God's still up there" he meant that he was, as you inferred, "waiting for the Invisible Sky Cop to save the day." That isn't the only possible interpretation to put on that single sentence in context, but it is the one that makes him look most like a religious nutter as opposed to a simple ignorant goon. It's possible that he was just indicating possible other causes for the phenomenon than human activity (yes, I know all the current evidence seems to indicate otherwise, I'm interpreting this guy not stating my opinion).

Then again, he might have been trying to put the blame on waste heat from the Old Guy's celestial shine operation...

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Again, my point: There are many reasonable Christians. There are many reasonable people of all faiths. The most famous of them tend to be the ones who do their god's work, who help people. The ones who say things like "God will provide", but who also look to see what He may provide and how they should use it.

Unfortunately, we have a bunch of people who really, really believe that God is up there directing traffic on every single person's life... all without the slightest shred of tangible evidence. Now, you can make a case for emotional guidance; something may have happened to get you into the faith, to make you truly believe. But for the chair of a Senate committee, which directs environmental policy, to say what he said -- and the entire quote is, "Now look, God's still up there", implying that it's not merely a philosophical throwaway in his mind but a winning debating point -- rather than look at the vast body of science which conflicts with his little fantasy world is at the very least stupidly irresponsible.

I've said before that rich, poor, Repub, Dem, white, black, none of it matters five days after you run out of potable water or five minutes after you run out of breathable air. These guys act as if God really will call them up in that time-window.

[wayward-va.livejournal.com]

The Lord helps those who help themselves. So if Inhofe wants God's help, he'd best get busy.:)

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

In case of rapture, (singsong) someone's going to be dissapointed!

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

Hey Tom, I was thinking.

There's this NeoCon I know who I had to ban from my Journal. He thinks Marbury V. Madison was a bad decision and that "Judges pay too much attention to precedent rather than the law".

I told him once I got more grief from the lefties than the righties, and he didn't believe it. He wanted to see an example. I thought about sending him to a discussion you and I had but didn't want him to troll in your journal.

Do you want to hammer him or should I keep him away from you? My instinct is to not give him access to your audience, but if you want someone to go after first hand, he'd be more than willing. And You'd moider him.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Oy. Does he not understand that, in ninety percent of the cases out there, the precedent is the law?

Honestly, if you had to ban the guy, I don't want to deal with him. I'm trying to blow off some steam here, not build up a new source.

[nightmarewriter.livejournal.com]

The Republicans have done their best to make "Liberal", "Progressive", and "Big Government" into dirty words, but I think we should reclaim them. The words don't mean what the Republicans think they mean .

This article at Pandagon shows where I got this idea: http://pandagon.net/2006/10/30/who-counts/

"Big" and "Small" actually mean : How many people does the government serve?

Conservatives (Who are mostly Rich White Guys) think government should only serve rich white guys, ie, look at the last six years, as the rich white guys got richer and richer, and everyone else had to f'ing look after themselves, when there wasn't an excuse for the government to oppress them. This is Small Government.

Liberals think the government should opperate for the benefit of EVERYONE: Rich and Poor, all Races, all Genders. This is Big Government.

The term Liberal really bothers those who bought into to conservative's definitions, that is, we're weirdos and into wasteful governments. But is it wasteful to operate government for the benefit of us _all_? Only if you think it's wastefully to benefit non-rich-white-guys, and that would only be true if you think only rich-white-guys are the ones who are truly human.

There you have the root cause of Racism, Sexism, and Classism... Add in the fact that in their view the rich-white-guys should be Christians, too... and that factors in everything else.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Tom, much as I am reminded to at least try and think of those on The Other Side as being at least passably human...in this guy's case, you fucking go to town on him, and I'll stand on the sidelines and cheer you on. I can't believe, with all the Repugs we got rid of two weeks ago, somehow Inhofe (who has been a known oral/mental diarrhea sufferer for years now) managed not to get voted out of office.

Either there's some damned dirty tricks going on in his district, or the liberal mobilization effort failed as miserably there as it did here in Georgia with regard to the state legislative and gubernatorial races; I refuse to believe a majority of Okies are evil, selfish or stupid enough to keep this fucktard on. (And I lived in Oklahoma City as a youth briefly, so I do know whereof I speak.)

Oklahoma Senate races

[bschilli.livejournal.com]

Senators are divided into three classes, which determines when their terms expire. 2006 was an election for Senators belonging to Class I. Oklahoma's Senators are Inhofe (Class II - 2008) and Coburn (Class III - 2010).

Ben

The LJ spell checker offers Unholy or Unsafe as possible replacements for Inhofe.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Realize that they are a very vocal minorty who had a relatively short lucky break but now find the full weight of the reality they tried so hard to deny crashing down on them and all that they believed was their's without question is rapidly slipping through their fingers and that it won't be long until they find themselves forced to either adapt to a world that is constantly changing about them or find themselves no longer a viable part of it...

And are thus to be pitied?

[louisadkins.livejournal.com]

Save your pity, please? When someone is pitied, people start feeling sorry for them, and then they start making exceptions for them... I want them to understand that actions do have consequences. (I know, most won't learn... but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want them to have the opportunity to learn.. no child left behind, indeed)

(Deleted and reposted due to spectacular grammatical error)

[magicaltrevor.livejournal.com]

I've been a partial lurker on your blog for some time, and I've seen a lot of people parade through here and try to tell you how you should think, and I usually think, "Oh, if you don't like this person's opinion, then stop reading his blog already >.<" However, I know you're interested in diverse opinions, and so I'd like to contribute my own.

I see a lot of liberals in this "I want to make nice with everybody" quandary. It's not a fun position to be in, this I know. If you say one thing, one side gets angry at you. If you say another, the other side gets angry. But please understand: many of us anger conservatives just by being alive. By being in their grocery stores, by sending our kids to "their" schools. We anger conservatives by asserting that we have the rights to our own bodies, and we anger them when we're given equal protection under the law, when we're allowed to vote, when we say we should have the same rights as everyone else.

They get very angry at us, Tom. They get so angry that they rape and kill us; they get so angry that they murder people just for looking like us. They fire us, they bully us, they make us afraid to walk home from our workplaces, they deny us our basic rights. They take us for criminals, they don't pay us the same, they teach their children to hate and fear us. They go to extreme lengths just to ensure that we know our place. And then they tell us that it's all our fault.

It's not about atheists vs christians or republicans vs democrats. It's about hate groups and their oppression of people like me. The idea that tolerance is the only appropriate course of action in all situations is empty rhetoric. It may feel like "tolerance" to try to make nice with *ist (meaning racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.) groups, but intolerance, ironically, cannot be eradicated through our tolerance of it.

It may be unpleasant to experience backlash from the *ist contingent who's not used to hearing their opinions rebuffed, but it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. Niceness (toward the majority) is not the definitive characteristic of liberalism; if anything, it's offensiveness. I mean, ultimately, if you stand on a soapbox and scream, "No one should be racist!" at the top of your lungs, there's always gonna be a KKK member somewhere in the world to disagree with you, and I think it'd be okay to be "intolerant" of that person's beliefs. You just have to be secure in that you're supporting the correct side, which, I think it's safe to say, is clearly the non-*ist side.

Re: (Deleted and reposted due to spectacular grammatical error)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Yeah, that's about how I feel. I really wasn't kidding when I wrote "Mind your business, clean things up, and get along". I can't think of three more basic rules for human civilization. I don't want to be mad at anyone. It takes a lot of energy that I'd rather spend doing, oh, anything.

[dragonscholar.livejournal.com]

I think the idea religion gets a free ride is bullshit. Or anything, really.

If your decisions affect ME directly, then your beliefs and actions are open for debate. So this guy can produce evidence how God's going to make things OK.

I can point to quite a few human and natural events he didn't do dick for.

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

dragonsholar said,
I think the idea religion gets a free ride is bullshit.

Does religion get a free ride? I was rather wondering why Tom Smith had presented Senator Inhofe's comments as a religious issue. The senator does invoke the name of God in his first sentence, but he invokes Nature in his second sentence and Science in his third sentence. He is doing an across-the-board whitewash of his ideas.

However, I looked up some more information on Senator Inhofe. Not only is he ultraconservative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe) and as dumb as a brick (http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson05122004.html), he also likes to mention God and the Bible in his speeches. So long as the senator brings his religion into his politics, it is fair for us to criticize his religious views.

And as a Christian myself, I can say that Senator Inhofe's views on God as as messed up as his views on Nature and Science. God will do little favors and big favors in response to prayer, but he also likes us to learn. God is our Heavenly Father, but he is a good father who teaches responsibility, not a bad father who spoils us. He is not going to automatically clean up our messes for us. I like the D.C. Simpson "I Drew This" cartoon (http://www.idrewthis.org/d/20050311.html) that yunatwilight pointed out.

Erin Schram

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

My plan for the afterlife is --

If there is an afterlife (which I don't for a moment believe), I'm going to be in Hell. I plan to get a sharp stick and wander around, poking at the roasting neocons and asking "So how about that Rapture? Guess Jebus will be along any day now? Oooo, is that a Divine Light? Nope, just a sodium flare."

Poke, poke, poke. I have such plans for my time in Hell.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Ok, my flabber has been thoroughly gasted... Yeek!

[madrona.livejournal.com]

As a Christian, I am offended.

Offended that the "haves" of our country want to MANIPULATE me THROUGH MY RELIGION, into following their pro-business, anti-everyone else agenda, and that they think I am STUPID ENOUGH to fall in line because CYNICALLY MOUTH the right KEYWORDS.

That's how I see this. I don't see how anyone honest and sane who has actually read the Bible could take the message away from it, "Screw up however much you want, God will fix everything because it's his job to save you from each and every one of your mistakes."

Yeesh.

[batyatoon]

My immediate response was actually pretty close to the cartoon that yunatwilight linked to. "Yes, God's still up there. And He left us in charge down here. And He's watching to see if we screw up."

Now, as anyone who's ever met me probably knows, I'm religious. And Tom, you can probably guess that I disagreed with a number of specific points in your song "The Here And Now." But one point in it that made me cheer out loud when you sang it in concert was the one about how whether or not God exists, our responsibilities to each other and to the world are pretty much identical.

I've got very little patience for anyone, religious or not, who maintains that believing in God absolves you of responsibility. So, yeah. What Inhofe said was at best pretty damn stupid.