Zealots…! What are you going to do with them? You can’t please them. No matter what you do, all they want is to set things on fire, riot and kill people. Crazy knuckleheads…
Iraq is slowly descending into chaos as US influence wanes, largely because the two major divisions of Islam, Sunni & Shia, still haven’t come to terms with a 1,500 year-old dispute over who should be the successor to the prophet Muhammad as caliph of the Islamic community. This dispute threatens to tear apart, not only Iraq, but undermines the entire Muslim world, from Pakistan and Indonesia across the Middle East and on into Africa. Literally millions of people have died in this titanic struggle over something that is otherwise utterly irrelevant to their day to day lives. It’s a particularly poisonous brand of madness peculiar to religious struggle and has played out in rivers of blood over the centuries and in spite of human advances in every other area of endeavor.
Afghanistan too is embroiled in a frenzy of anger, killing and chaos because some dim-wit soldiers didn’t have enough sense to recognize that starting a bonfire with a bunch of tattered copies of Islam’s holy book would likely upset the locals. This most recent demonstration of ignorance and bloated hubris by military types notwithstanding, the response – a crazed and savage week-long riot and killing spree – is all too common when the Afghans and Muslims in general feel that someone somehow disrespected the Koran, or the Prophet or any number of other totems. Killing in god’s name carries a badge of honor that is almost incomprehensible to the modern West where we tend to opt for more sophisticated justifications – our “national interests”, for just one example.
As we watch with contempt the mullahs huddling in the back rooms of temples across the Middle East and acting as the power behind the erratic Amadinijads of the world, we congratulate ourselves for being above that – we unabashedly spend our time in the more modern pastimes of consuming everything is sight, drowning in the cult of celebrity and proclaiming freedom and liberty across the land. We could never abide reclusive mystics and seers telling us how to live or what to think or how many times a day we should pray.
Cut to Rick Santorum, leading candidate for president in America in this year of 2012. This is a man who stated without shame that he doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state, one of the bedrock principles of the constitution. He stands in front of the media and distorts the position of the current administration, inventing hostility to religion that isn’t there, inventing conflict in the hopes of foisting his particular, twisted brand of theocracy on the ignorant. The question of how this man can even exist as a major political figure in America in the 21st century may be studied for years. Yet today he almost wins the primary in Michigan preaching an incoherent brew of suppressed hatred and fear of women, the danger of birth control, unlawful carnal knowledge and the crumbling edge of the cliff leading to mandatory Christianity, home schooling and a butter churn in every kitchen operating by a barefoot and pregnant woman.
This is a man with no joy in his life, regardless of how many children he has. Were he to be forced to choose to govern by the strictures of the old testament or the constitution, which would he choose? The righteous who are primarily guided in life by these 2,000 year-old metaphorical stories almost always live a life of fear and hatred, shame and the suppression of all of the bacchanal impulses that constitute the great joy of living. Like a repressive mullah in a sweater vest, Rick promises that if he is elected he will govern with the wisdom of David if only we will all live the Christian life he envisions for us – where we promise to not have sex for fun and hate those who we have a duty to hate.
Even more dangerous is Santorum’s – and all of the republican candidates’ – bizarre and irrational support for Israel. It doesn’t seem to be based on any reasoned geopolitical consideration – instead it is required because little baby Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem and played out most of his doomed existence along the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
Why does Santorum want to bomb Iran to a pile of cinders and broken glass? Not because of any imminent threat to the United States; rather to protect Israel and an Israeli government too intransigent to stop building apartment buildings in the West Bank.
Why does his foreign policy prominently feature our armed forces as the point of the spear – the default for solving the vexing problems of the world in the 21st century? For that matter, what motivates Newt Gingrich’s equally belligerent design for America’s place in the world? Is it Old Testament biblical “smite thine enemies with the mighty sword of righteousness” rhetoric? Is it any less dangerous than Amaninijad jabbering on, denying the holocaust or the overheated “Great Satan” nonsense coming from many of the religious leaders around the world?
The other day in a widely reported speech, Santorum contemptuously ridiculed Obama’s call for an educated citizenry, practically spitting as he called him a “snob” for urging education as a path to a better life. You have to scratch your head and wonder what could motivate him to take that position. Could it be that a flock of the ignorant are more easily led over the cliff – would be more accepting of a Santorum government that dissects the constitution until there’s nothing left but the right to bear arms? How long would that last if you were not a good and obedient Christian soldier?
Maybe I’m over-reacting; maybe the only reason Rick is still politically relevant is a deep-pockets supporter enabled by Citizens United, (an achingly ironic title to a disastrous decision, in my opinion). Under previous circumstances he would have been rendered irrelevant and be at home in his "workshop" in the garage with the latest Glamour magazine by now. But that is the crux of why his continued presence is so disturbing. In its befuddled attempt to support “free speech”, the Roberts court has – perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not – allowed and enabled this cartoon character to make a legitimate run for the presidency of the United States.
He lost last night, as it turns out, and he isn’t nearly as scary in the light of a new day. Romney is scary in his own way – as a cross between George HW Bush and Thurston Howell the 3rd – but if I had to choose I would leave the male version of Joan of Arc to wander the country looking for a bonfire.
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