In case you all weren't clear

[substitute]

I’m not a Christian any more because that word in my country now means ignorant, bloodthirsty, hate-filled hypocrite and nothing more. The five of you who aren’t, I apologize.

I don’t tolerate Republicans or “conservatives” or any of that shit because you support the ideology and the party and the people who hate me, who want me and my friends dead, who say that I’m not American, and who want to strip us all of our civil rights and send us to concentration camps. This is not hyperbole; I’ve seen it all said by people in power.

My country is under occupation by a hostile power that seeks a theocracy and the abrogation of the Constitution, war without end, and the destruction of the middle class. No one who makes less than a half million a year benefits from them financially and no one who believes in the Enlightenment ideals of our country’s founders has any business agreeing with their ideas.

It’s total war now. I reject your god of conquest, your worship of wealth, your hate of everyone different or weak, and your ignorance.

Come and fucking get it and find out what armed liberals are like. .40 hollowpoints kill right-wingers too.

Comments

[jonpants.livejournal.com]

Ok so will you come to my house fo Chanakuh?

[substitute.livejournal.com]

not everything is a joke, Jon

[fimmtiu.livejournal.com]

Jesus. You seriously need a vacation from the news, mate, or you'll end up in a clock tower somewhere. Yeah, there's a lot of fucked-up stuff about the U.S.A. that should make people angry, but what this country needs more than anything right now is reason. We have enough violence and vitriol already, and it's not doing us any good.

We all get frustrated sometimes. Just don't let it consume you.

the clock tower sounds real good about now

[substitute.livejournal.com]

It's not the news. It's the people around me in this fucking county. I got to listen to a group of them talk about what to do about people like me for a while today. For about the 100,000th time. I'm ready to tear shit up.

[kennfusion.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that the anger is good among liberals right now. It has been the role of thinking liberals in the US for the past 30 years or so to take the moral high ground, to intellectualize and philosophize the militant conservative agenda.

The left has some extremists, radical feminists, self-serving minority leaders, etc. that have been the only voices of anger, and the rest of us have distanced ourselves from them.

But that lack of fiery motivation, of passion for our beliefs that we have been keeping inside as rational human beings is exactly why they Right has been so much more successful. It is contagious and sweeps up people into it. Which is why the south is so conservative for the first time since the Civil war.

Substitute's anger is exactly what we need now, and for the next four years till the 2008 election, in order to have a chance to retake this country.

Reason, is how we have lost control of the country to this madness.

[(Anonymous)]

"Just be reasonable and believe what I believe and everything will be okay."

NO.

[childlaborcheap.livejournal.com]

i'm sitting here watching "the donut repair club" children's puppet show on EWTN and finding myself quite disturbed. at one point the big muscled leader of the 'angel force club' was talking about how good it was that pope pious x was able to kill thousands of muslims and stop them from taking over the world. it wasn't surprising, but i didn't think they'd be so forthcoming as to directly say that to their kids on a tv show.

i keep going back and forth between believing that conservative christians are intelligent but too deeply entrenched in their culture to be what liberals would call socially progressive and sensitive and believing that they all just totally off their rockers. and with the possible exception of a handful of moderate republicans (who would probably be better off describing themselves as libertarians and not republicans), i'm genuinely starting to believe that in order to be a republican you either have to be duped or be in on the duping.

is this what it will come down to?

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

I found your journal through reading chaptal's friends list. Hope you don't mind.

This is one helluva an eloquent post and captures really nicely what a lot of us are feeling with this election. Back in the days of Reagan, the Moral Majority was upfront about calling for a cultural war. It got repackaged under Bush I (thousand points of light) and again under Dubya (compassionate conservatism) but it is still the same old shit and it is time to meet their hatred with anger.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Also, you might want to check this out- http://politicalhumor.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=politicalhumor&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wiseass.org%2Fhtml%2Fcontent-jesus.html

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, Reagan spoke out publically against the Briggs Amendment in California, circa 1978--a risk for any Republican seeking national office at the time, and was in a lot of ways a powerful leader against discrimination and oppression. The Moral Majority was Jerry Falwell's idea, not Ronald Reagan's.

Not that I am letting Reagan or his staff off the hook for anything they should be responsible for, and there certainly is plenty, I'm just a believer in credit where credit's due, right or wrong.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about Briggs- thanks for pointing it out. And in googling it, "gay" groups of all political stripes give Reagan credit for opposing it.

As for the Moral Majority, I did know it was started by Falwell and other religious leaders and not Reagan. The similarity is that Reagan and both Bushs, while not themselves all that religiously conservative, all found themselves beholden to these groups for the support they were given by these groups.

What concerns me is that after this latest election, conservative religious groups are not at all being shy about holding out their hands and demanding payoff. They're asking for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages, appointment of religiously conservative Supreme Court justices who will rule favorably for them in matters of overturning Roe v Wade, allowing for school prayer and the posting of the 10 Commandments, school "choice" (code for government $ to subsidize private religious schools), and a whole other slew of things.

Now, the question is whether or not Bush will decide he got what he wanted out of these groups and will conduct his 2nd term with an eye towards doing what's best for the country instead of what's best for those right-wing nutjobs. By doing the latter, he will fuck the GOP for 2008.

I think we may see something falling in the middle, with an eye toward Jeb running in 2008. He'll need the support of the nutjobs as well.

Ahh, intrigue....

[salvadors.livejournal.com]

I am not a Christian because Christianity is demonstrably false. One of its fundamental premises is the very existence of a sentient supernatural entity---God---which hasn't been proven yet. I don't believe in God for the same reason I don't believe in Zeus; absence of evidence. The absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence.

that's uninteresting to me

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Irrespective of philosophical arguments about the supernatural I am unwilling to be associated with a gang of murderers and liars.

My point was not anywhere near a critique of the rationality of religion. People who preach love and humility and generosity and then act from hate, pride, and greed are poisonous to their belief sytem whether they're Christians, worshippers of Wotan, atheist Socialists, or just really intense Star Trek fans. It's an ethical problem, not a metaphysical one.

Re: that's uninteresting to me

[salvadors.livejournal.com]

Though your point was obvious to me from the start and I agree with it, they're interrelated. People act based on what? Beliefs. In fact, I'd argue your beliefs on metaphysics will determine a great deal of your ethics (how you will act).

Re: that's uninteresting to me

[(Anonymous)]

I completely disagree.

People act mainly on the basis of "what's in it for me?" If it happens to fit a system of beliefs they choose to wear on their sleeve, so much the better, it gives them a reason that publically does not appear to be selfish.

I respectfully disagree

[citizenx.livejournal.com]

I consider myself agnostic rather than atheist, though some would consider weak and wishy-washy because of this. How would you propose to prove the existence of God? What would be considered evidence of God's existence?

It had better be a good test. Consider the words of Edsger Dijkstra, who said "Testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence."