squidbag

On the Death of Fred Phelps

 

LOU: Okay, Fred Phelps. 

PETE: Obviously, I'm not taking him. He goes below. 

LOU: I'm not taking him. 

PETE: You must be joking – of course, he's one of yours. 

LOU: Coulda fooled me, breadbasket church and all; anyway, I don't want him. 

PETE: I don't think that's your call. 

LOU: The hell it's not; who else? Anyway, he's not coming here. 

PETE: Well, he's not going topside, that's completely inappropriate. 

LOU: He did work for you guys basically his whole life... 

PETE: That's not really true and you know it! His was work you people created!

LOU: "You people."

PETE: Alright, I'm sorry. 

LOU: Whatever. So if he was one of my guys, why not publicly strike him dead? At one of those stupid pickets? 

PETE: You know we don't do that anymore. Not since the sacrifice. 

LOU: Officially, sure. People get hit by stuff all the time, though. You could have just done that. 

PETE: You think if we can't blow up Hitler, we can drop something heavy on Fred? It's a free will thing. 

LOU: Well, my free will says Fred's not coming to hell. He's a minister, you fucking take him. 

PETE: He calls himself a minister. It's a lie. There's not any ministering to anyone happening. There's a lot of lying and hiding and secret sin and denial and hate in this guy; I'd think you'd want him down below to tour the circles. Besides, his personal behavior has to have had a sin ripple effect, people getting mad and breaking stuff and hurting each other because of him – he's got to be good for your business. 

LOU: That's where you're wrong: for every shouting asshole on a street corner or outside of a funeral, there ended up being a legion of considerate people making human shields, veterans protecting their own, peaceful protesters spreading messages of love and acceptance – turns my stomach, is what it does. A guy like this thinks that he can hate with impunity and show people the way, and all he does is show them who they don't want to be. And they're better for it! At the end of the day, they still honor their beloved dead, they still have their conventions, and they come out in big numbers to fight this guy with peace and love and ideas and solutions...I'm NOT fucking taking him. 

PETE: Shit. ...reincarnation? 

LOU: That could work. Maybe. As who? 

PETE: Definitely a gay kid. 

LOU: Yeah, I could maybe get behind that. Not that you need my help, since he just gets born.

PETE: Sounds like a plan.

LOU: I always enjoy our talks.

Duck Disappointment

Over the course of this recently passed holiday season, I espoused the point of view - more than once - that if you were hanging out with your friends and family and discussing Phil Robertson's relatively recent remarks, then you had already lost, succumbed to the trap the Robertson family (and maybe A&E) wanted you in from the very beginning - talking about the stars of Duck Dynasty during the off-season, just after the Christmas special had run, and in the break before the show comes back on the air with new episodes mid-January. Think that's paranoid? Do you imagine it far-fetched that this is a plan? These people are hunters and trappers by primary vocation, and they run a media empire that breaks records AND you had never even heard of them two years ago. Not even two: the show started in March of 2012. So you got spanked by a bunch of rednecks if you spent the holidays posting and arguing and spouting off about Phil. You're prey, a mark. Congratulations: you got suckered.

Probably not as badly as I did, though. I watch this show. Pretty regularly. I wrote a paper comparing it favorably with "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo." I read the books that came out last year (took me about four hours in total to read all three), and I had 40 of the episodes built up on my DVR for decompression time after I graduated. Granted, they were there with the specific intent of killing brain cells: the re-runs have a relaxing kind of rhythm to them. I like the show and think Uncle Si and Jase are funny. I think Willie's probably a business genius. I don't have the "killing animals and eating them" objection that a lot of my friends have, and there's been nothing on the show I haven't been more or less comfortable letting my kids watch. There are far fewer adult words and ideas than on the sit-coms and dramas we sometimes watch together. The show also doesn't follow the format of other reality shows with the endlessly repeated scenes, long cuts, sensationalism and degradation, and it evokes, emotionally, people I grew up around as a Southerner. That includes jackass people like Phil Robertson.

Every left-of-center person I know who watches Duck Dynasty has put forth, in some form or another, the idea that the more we watch, the less we like Phil. You cannot watch the show for any length of time and not get a pretty good bead on the fact that he's an old-fashioned, intolerant titan of arrogance. From his casual sexism to his assertion that an effeminate photographer has "mommy issues," Phil's an unabashed dick, but he's only one person on the show. Herein lies my second point (the first being that this kerfuffle is just twerking naked for rednecks) - PHIL'S NOT THE ONLY PERSON ON THE SHOW. Fine, he's the patriarch, he's the "Duck Commander," whatever - but what do YOU do when someone in your family's a fuckwit? How many chances do you give your Uncle Douchebag, racist grandpop, or old dog cousin? And before you answer, I'd invite you to measure your excised number of family members against mine. Most people in families don't just kick people out - I'd also invite you to remember that. There's a bunch of other Robertsons, and $$$ aside, it's none of our fucking business how they proceed from here unless they make it so. Some would argue that they have - I'm not as sure.

Next: There is the "what did you expect from a pig from a grunt" argument. Phil's old, white Church of Christ and not terribly bright - he has made his success from working hard, often a Southern or broke people's substitute for being smart. His unenlightened views on homosexuality are widely shared here in the American southeast, disgusting and wrongheaded as they are. Sounds like an opportunity to talk about that, yes? His remarks on black people are so profoundly stupid and blinkered, they sound like where White Guilt intersects with White Privilege, so it's kind of easy to see where that comes from, too. None of this excuses the dumb shit that he said, and continues to say, and likely believes, but one has to wonder where the outrage and surprise comes from. It rings hollow. (If he weren't rich, he'd be another dumb motherfucker I ignore at a truck stop, failing a teachable moment.) Really, Media America? You didn't see this coming? As a group, the Robertsons know who their audience is - they just put their name on a line of guns, and made nice with 'Murica everywhere from Baba Wawa to Fox News. The fucking Christmas show pointedly opens actually inside a Wal-Mart. 

So, "Free" Speech: Phil has oodles of free speech. Anyone who says different is desperately trying to latch onto the controversy for their own gain, SARAH FUCKING PALIN. Or they're mixed up about the concept. Phil's employer disciplined him (barely) for some shit that he may even have been contractually obligated to shut the fuck up about - and we don't know anything about that. Find me a contract if you'd like to fight about that. What we do know is that his comments were printed in a magazine, and are still available on the Internet with "the 25 greatest breasts in movie history" right next to them. Free speech, people. Free speech is not saying whatever you want without repercussion - there are limits and laws restricting it, as well there should be. The private entities involved in this further complicate what is, in this case, a nonexistent issue.

Maybe reacting to this at all was pretty stupid of us as a group, yeah? Maybe a nice, measured action after the fact would be something to do? Unfortunately, this is where I find myself now. I made the mistake of saving the Xmas special until yesterday - I didn't want to watch it during the flap - and now I find that the thrill is gone. I knew the car guzzled gas, but now I know it takes jobs overseas, too? That might just be too much. I'm pissed and disappointed with Phil Robertson's hypocritical ass and wish that he could have kept his fool mouth shut and not ruined his family's show for me, even though I kind of already knew he was an intolerant gasbag, but I think now that if I watched it, I would not want my kids in the room, would not be able to face my gay friends or anyone else, and might find it inconsistent with what I think is good in the world.

Which is a shame. But we'll always have this.

Debate Two

This one was more fun.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, please refer to the previous entry.

In this one, our assignment was to show up and defend "authoritarian capitalism" (essentially, Hamiltonian economics and market systems combined with Gilded Age thinking) against a team who, when handed the ideology of "social democracy" went for a kind of Socialist Democratic Utopia that they elucidated pretty well except around some of the smaller nuts and bolts. My guys took the approach of straight up Gilded Age "God Wants You to Be Rich" thinkers - essentially, Carnegie defending his empire. Needless to say, we got hammered - I was shocked by the one vote we garnered out of five - and only in part because of our indefensible ideology; we also had a drama queen on staff who may have over buzzworded "communism" & "drinking" a little bit. Anyway, here was the fleshed out bit I got to use:

"Society, morality and spirituality exhort us all to be charitable. Within the limits of what we can achieve, we are meant to give, not only of ourselves, but of our monetary and material wealth. Individuals put money in the church collection baskets, into the buckets of bell-ringers, and donate their old things to the Goodwills and the Salvation Armies in the hopes that some person with less than they have will benefit from their act of charity. Hope is a big part of this process.

Charity, performed on large, impactful scales is called philanthropy. Philanthropy literally means a “love of humanity.” In the old Greek sense, it implies loyalty and a looking after something, Being a caretaker. Virtue is required to love something in this way. Philanthropy, then, is a virtuous love of humanity, expressed as a contribution to its overall well-being within society.

Average people are not capable of virtuous action on this level. While they may ache to give to their fellows – and even follow through in a limited way, as in the above examples – they simply lack the capacity to contribute large sums of money and resources to society, instead giving where they can and making little to no observable difference. A wealthy person, someone with adequate resources for dealing with a problem, is [by contrast] capable of contributing massive funds (on a level not even conceivable by the average man) toward a solution to a problem, a remedy for an ill, or simply an improvement to society at large. The average man cannot establish a foundation that funds public radio and television or efforts toward international peace like the various Carnegie endowments. Wealthy people engaging in philanthropic acts of this kind create an incontestable benefit for everyone – and in a tangible way that widespread distribution of that same resource in the hands of many would not. Not only does the proliferate giving by the less wealthy have less impact, it can also create harmful waste and deluded ideas about what works and what doesn't.

Peter Buffet, the son of Warren Buffet, made an argument relating to this phenomenon back in July for an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, in which he referred to the widespread small-change giving practiced by people with limited resources combined with the bloated state of the non-profit industry as a form of “conscience-laundering.” In effect, it allows the disparate charitable giving to spread without doing much good, while simultaneously allowing people to go on with their lives believing that they have done a great good. Picture a yard littered with trash which is then dusted by a newfallen snow. It's pretty & conceals the trash – but only for a while.

Philanthropy can make an impact like an avalanche, whisking away a great ill in an unstoppable torrent, or like the massive snowball that picks up speed and size as it rolls downhill – the size of the movement, and the way in which it is centralized make all the difference. That said, if you're someone who claims to truly care about our society and improvement of the world we see around us, you have to support great wealth in the hands a few very virtuous men as a concept we can all get behind. For the greater good of mankind, economic power must rest in the hands of those who will grasp and wield it to make a real difference."

And the great crazy speech I never shared because the opportunity eluded me:

"Adam Smith famously spoke of an “Unseen Hand” that invisibly regulates the economy as though by a natural process; We would argue that the consolidation of wealth in the hands of the few is the result of God helping those who help themselves, the result of an intervention by a “Divine Hand,” if you will. Andrew Carnegie wrote that society would be best benefited by the application of wealth not by governments or inheritance or bequests, but by the wealthy men who had the acumen and wherewithal to garner great wealth in the first place.

For them to achieve in this way, they have to have applied their gifts from God diligently and virtuously, or surely God would not have allowed them to succeed. In reality, he has placed the biggest challenges before the rich man: Jesus told of the likelihood of the camel making it through the eye of the needle being greater than the rich man making it into Heaven; unless you believe that God wants to exclude all rich men from Heaven, then you must believe that that He [the Almighty God] puts no challenges before us that we cannot handle, and thus what Christ means is that the rich man must work harder, has a rougher time of it, must contribute more, must carry the burden of the poor upon his back and truly be a boon and blessing to society as a whole if he seeks to enter the perfect and holy kingdom of God.

The Bible also says that “the love of money is the root of all evil,” and assuredly, that's true, but the wealthy man does not love his money, he merely loves what it can do for mankind. God has placed the wealth in the hands of the very few for the same reason that He does not grow tropical fruit in any place except the tropics; he knows that it will only flourish when cared for properly by men of skill and virtue."

Russia Is Stupid

Um, before I actually get into the topic the title implies I'll be covering, I'd like to say that Pussy Riot, what they're trying to do, their music (which I have to go look up lyric translations for), what they're enduring right now, in terms of being separated from their families and freedom, and the whole DIY, illegal performances, "music as non-commodity" vibe that they put into their tunes, image, videos and everything they do is inspiring, and warms pieces of my heart that typically go unwarmed. Now watch the new video if you haven't already. It is decidedly unstupid.

A portion of the band is still in jail, you know - there was another parole denial today. She's already done something like a year and change for protesting for under a minute; if you were old enough to be missing the free speech suppression of the old "Evil Empire" red days of the Cold War era - Putin's here for you. His government is going to sock people in jail and just leave 'em there if the speak out publicly against religion, trade, patriarchy or you know, suppression. This, of course, is the first point of Russian stupidity being addressed: How many of you would even know about Pussy Riot if they'd never been arrested and tried? I'm not encouraging the old school method of simply disappearing folks from the planet, but ignoring them probably might have worked? This method has a huge flaw that I've noticed, anyway.

But the Russian government won't do that because it's stupid - next case: "Gay." Russia has an abysmal GLBT rights record; failing to take any kind of cue from the parts of Europe that are becoming more institutionally accepting, they've chosen over the last several years to go the other way entirely - wishing that they didn't have gay people in Russia anymore and refusing to let people talk about the ones that they do have. If you're a gay Russian, you can't have a pride parade (in Moscow) for 100 years, you can't serve in the military or give blood, and finally, you can't say what you are. No saying "gay." Also, they'll mask up and beat the shit out of you if you protest. Or, as in the above example, toss your ass in jail. You know, for spreading your gay propaganda.

(I was going to post links to more articles from Pravda about some of this stuff, but their website is troublesome, and also a great example of this "propaganda" stuff you hear so much about from gay people. Have a look. Actually, the more I looked, the more I became totally confused. *slaps forehead* I shoulda had Izvestia!)

Finally, the main reason Russia's stupid (we've been alluding to him all along) is President Forever Vlad Putin, Jr. Junior's the man who had the moment with Dubya Monkeyface where they looked into one another's eyes and made a connection, which is so not gay. Other stuff that Putin does that proves he's a big masculine Russian bear includes finding unburied treasure, shirtlessly camping and fishing for camera crews, flying jets and drugging wildlife, riding motorbikes, racecars and submarines and having comic books about him. None of this, of course, is remotely staged or in aid of his image, and there are people on hand to assure anyone who wonders about this that all of his acts "are completely normal thing(s) to do."

Sure, Junior. Go ahead and have your fun. Stupid bastard.

Kirk Cameron: Modern Martyr

Kirk Cameron's all mixed up again.

In the above video, in which he's promoting a movie or something, he claims to be a "recovering atheist." Saying that not believing what he does is like alcoholism or cancer - which is, of course, something else he believes. Atheists are all diseased people. He goes on to say that in order to be a "good atheist," (which he wasn't, or he wouldn't be in recovery) every atheist has to believe two things:

Let me stop you right there, Kirk. No. There is nothing an atheist has to believe, do or say. It's not a club, it's not a group, we don't have ID cards or hats or congregations. (There are probably conventions, but I'd rather not know about them.) There's no test of atheist membership; no atheist baptisms or christenings or confirmations or circumcisions or pilgrimages or pledges or prayers. It's kind of a nothing-seeming arrangement if you're looking at it from the outside, because for the most part, there's nothing to do.

Anyway, his two things: Atheists must believe there is no god. This is patently false, and is often understood in this way by people who have used their faith so much they forget how to reason. I have always thought that faith is like a hammer. A blunt tool that works great on one, maybe two things, but when you start trying to apply it to precise and elegant tasks, it breaks everything and you have to start over. Kirk has made the classic believer's error of mistaking non-belief in a god for belief there is no god. Take your time. That's a fine distinction that can't be parsed with a hammer, or in a minute and half YouTube video, and if I weren't feeling charitable today, I'd suspect he made it on purpose.

In the Book of Kirk, atheists also have to hate God. Since this is ridiculous to the point of unintelligibility, I'm going to assume for a moment that Kirk did this deliberately as a rhetorical device instead of wading into the dual impossibilities of hating something that doesn't exist while substituting an emotion for an actual belief. What I think happens here is transference; since people hate what comes out of Kirk's noise hole and would like him to shut up, he assumes they hate God, because that's easier for him to do. He goes on to assert that atheists hate God's moral standard. This is Classical Christian Condescension, because it tacitly asserts that the only proper moral standard comes from Christians, and everyone else is immoral. If that's the case, though, and Kirk's the embodiment thereof? Then he and I can agree on this - I am not enjoying this moral standard, such as it is.

The other place we find agreement is where he says that atheists hate how God (he means people like himself) are "transforming the world." He's right again - I hate the dumbing down effect conversations like this have on everyone, I hate the false martyrdom, and I hate the fact that a liar and "celebrity" like Cameron can promote his movie with an attack on a group of people and not have it called hate speech.

See what I did there? I agreed with Kirk Cameron. Twice. It's a special day.

The American Hopeless Problem

If you're like me, (and you know you are, secretly, down in places you'd rather not acknowledge) you find yourself frequently in observation of others and thinking "Man, this guy is completely hopeless."

Whether it be some talking head floundering around for ersatz points on his conspiracy monsters map in the media or hapless motorists who seem not to understand physics, vehicles, or indeed, sitting up, you've seen them. Unspeakably rude bastards who have jaws that unhingedly jack in the hot air that spews incessantly from their putrid noise holes or morally superior pricks who wield their sceptre-cocks of half-baked ideology over anyone who is unfortunate enough to be caught in their headlight gaze, you know who they are. Ever encountered someone who is obviously in the wrong, but assumes instead that it is everyone else? Liars? Thieves? Shouting driveway shitheads? Pious and necktied doorstep religion peddlers? A person who doesn't seem to grasp societal norms of speaking, relating to others or wearing clothes? People who act like sit-com characters? Anyone who is still blowing their nose in restaurants? Reason-free martinets? Vacuous bureaucrats? Anyone with 1000 piercings? Like they walked into Blind Jack's Needle Hut and just said, "Here's money. Fuck me up." White people with dreads? Stank-ass dreads? Gibbering fuckheads just on the wander? Someone who is just extraordinarily bad at their one job; people who are essentially doorknobs, with one thing they can do, and it just means they go back and forth all fucking day? People who make you say, "Jumping Jesus at this hopeless bastard; kids, don't look." The hopeless. They are a problem for all Americans, and all of us have seen this chronic hopelessness problem. If you're like me, then you're tired of this shit.

I know what you're thinking: "Sure, there's a problem in this country and I *hate* that, but what I can I do - the situation is, by definition, hopeless. I mean, have you seen these fucking people?!?" Yes, I've seen them, and I've heard the sounds they make, and you sound like one of those hopeless bastards now, with your gibbery whine noises and blibbity blabbery. Shut your mouth, grow a spine and help me confront the problem before the big guns of the War On Hopelessness are pointed at your ass. 

That's right; the War on Hopelessness. It's very patriotic. We're going to stop having no hope, and have fucking hope instead. In fact, that's our slogan: HAVE FUCKING HOPE. We're going to hope things turn out okay, we're going to hope not to run into any desperate shitheads during our days, we're going to hope not to run out of money. We're going to have hope and fight the hopeless, bringing them around, and if they can't be brought around, we'll wade through the oceans of their gibbering froth to the islands of their incapacitated, lying drunken on bathroom floors & watching reality TV. We're going to work to make the things we hope for, and then hope for whatever the next shit on the horizon is, too. We're actually going to hope for the future, because you know why? The alternative is to end up among the hopeless, taking up space and wasting time and fucking with others.

Even if the hope turns out to be unjustified, it'll be worth it not to have been down there with the likes of them.

I'm Trying to Understand

Last month, a bunch of us found out that my daughter's Girl Scout troop leader had been lying to all of us about various things for almost two years, stealing money from the troop and using it for whatever she saw fit, and withholding information and opportunities from the girls. I am happy to say that she is now our former Girl Scout leader, and is no longer allowed around Scouting at all. I gave her multiple online opportunities to come clean about it or tell her side of the story but was roundly ignored. She won't speak to me in public, either, choosing instead to alter her schedule so we don't see each other and refusing to acknowledge my existence. It's clear that she's told her two daughters, casualties of the situation if ever such existed, to do likewise. Troop gossip is that she contends that she's done nothing wrong and is espousing a "I'm just a victim" story to anyone who will listen. 

Last week a young man who everyone says was a very pleasant guy blew up a bunch of people in Boston with a shrapnel bomb in a backpack. Apparently, this was done to defend Islam, perhaps at the suggestion of his other brother who was not as successful in life. The two men killed four people, wounded scores more, and created an atmosphere of havoc over something that not only doesn't need defending, but isn't even really a thing. Later, after being wounded in the throat and fighting police, the young man hid in a boat, and is now in hospital with a serious injury, communicating by writing, and being promised the death penalty when found guilty of what he's done. His brother is dead, and likely this upsets no one but him. 

Today, during one of my classes at school, a young woman who was supposed to be doing a speaking presentation about anti-abortion radicals (the sort who kill people and firebomb stuff) instead decided to distribute a handout urging us to "save the babies" and then went on for six minutes about how horrible abortions are. When gently confronted by our professor about whether or not she was ever going to move on from graphic & illustrated descriptions of abortions and talk about the actual topic to which she'd been assigned, she shut down completely, ended her presentation, became disrespectful, and refused to participate further in the class. She quickly ducked out when class was over, and we had to overcome awkwardness to move forward.

I suspect that my former GS troop leader felt desparate and unappreciated, overwhelmed and sad, worked over by life. But you don't get to lie and steal from children, at one point withholding a not-insubstantial gift card from a boy with cancer. I suspect that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev loved his brother and was "radicalized" by his brother's strong faith and opinions and undue influence to the point that he was willing to do anything, including kill people. Maybe he thought it wouldn't work; maybe he thought he'd never be caught. Nothing justifies what he did. I suspect that my fellow student was - inside her mind - taking a heroic stance for the "rights of the unborn," speaking up for them when she felt people had to listen. Nothing makes hijacking a class with your subjective opinion and trying to manipulate them a good substitute for a research project.

I'm trying my damndest to understand you fucking people - but you don't make it easy.

The End is (Not) Nigh

I know you people believe stuff more or less at random, but this? This is embarrassing for us as a group. No, as a race. The human race should be collectively embarrassed over this. This would be as bad as reality TV if it didn't have a built-in expiration date stamped on it.

First off, even if you are the sort of person who believes that this symbol, or this one, or this one or this one or even this one, mean something to which you can semi-rationally or emotionally relate, you have to admit that basing a belief that the world is going to end on an ancient piece of semi-functional rock is pretty fucking thin. It's beyond thin. It's Karen Carpenter, it's Kate Moss's hipbones. I mean, I get that a lot of people want to believe in angels and demons and a coming zombie apocalypse, and that they base their "serious" beliefs on...well, on a lot less than this, but choosing to believe that the end of the world is coming because this thing doesn't have December 22nd on it is like assuming the world ends every year on December 31st at midnight because you didn't get a new calendar for Christmas. It is beyond ridiculous, and it is the behavior of people who shouldn't have privileges, knives, children, conversations, licenses or credit. 

First off, this thing is not a measuring device that should be given any credence by an advanced civilization. In this case, "advanced civilization" means any civilization who has given up worshipping corn gods, tying your wife's tongue up with barbed wire, and using heads for sport. Our measuring devices have numbers and letters on them, and if you want to argue that this is an arbitrary difference, imagine a tape measure where you had to tell someone the couch was "six snakes long." Or someone's temperature was "three pointy face guys." Extreme silliness.

Then, there's how this great mad stone bastard works. It needs two other massive stone wheels to work properly, I believe, and you only ever see this one. The "long measure" of time as calculated by the Mayans requires this disc inside of the other wheely thing, and no one's really doing that. Regardless, you can set this one in the other one and get to December 21 and no further - which is the point at which the Mayans would have re-set this thing and started counting again, you stupid, stupid people. Just a little reading and you can get right to it. I don't even really understand it and I have a better grasp on this than you do, you end of world moron, you. Additionally, it is perhaps important to realize that the Mayans didn't do leap years, and when you try mooshing that system with the one they were using, the world ended eight months ago, and you dumb motherfuckers didn't even notice.

So. What is this, really? An excuse for people to act stupid again? For people to kiss and fuck and fondle people they're not supposed to because the world's coming to an end? So they can be irresponsible and claim this was the reason? So they can spend too much on Christmas bullshit stuff? Just a "belief of the week," where, once you were done with Planet X or Ron Paul or vampires or group supremacy or religious craziness you could move on to this, believe in it until the 22nd, and then move on to "Well, I'm going to hold onto my canned goods and shotguns because the world has to end sometime."

Not soon enough, cousin. Not by a long shot.

Secret Atheist Plan to Destroy Xmas

Some of you may have heard about Pat Robertson recently revealing the Secret Grinch Atheist Plan to Destroy Christmas and Rob the Rest of You of Happiness Because We Hate Happiness, which they were originally going to call S.G.A.P.D.C.R.R.Y.H.B.W.H.H., but that sounds like someone throwing up, kind of, and so it came to be called OPERATION MISERABLE, but it seems he found that out too, as you'll hear him drop none-to-subtle revelatory hints in that direction.

At first, the atheist "community" was all like, "Oh, shit - Pat knows the plan! He's exposed us on his important television program, despite the fact that those three words are meaningless when grouped in that order!" They ran about with their heads on fire, angry, black-hearted elves deprived of what constitutes holiday joy for people like that - wrecking that shit for everyone else. For years, they've avoided nog, presents, carols and bells for fear that shared simple enjoyment of these normal things would corrupt the plan to rob everyone else of fun. Now, it seemed as though all might be for naught, as Robertson's elite truth squad had tanked the plan.

Then a different school of thought became apparent; maybe Patty was engaging in a clever ploy to elevate the status of that oldest of Christian institutions, martyrdom. Maybe by once again dragging out the old "war on Christmas" (roasting) chestnut, he sought to whip up victimhood and false righteousness, really foment some of that old-tyme hatred of the heathen that so warms sacred hearts during the holiday season that Christians like so much that they stole it from the Romans and just wish most of the rest of world and a quarter of the US would go the fuck away and not bother them during.

But that's not REALLY what's going on here. Not really.

What's really happening is that Pat Robertson is a deep cover atheist operative embedded so well into what passes for our culture that no one even notices some of the obvious giveaways: His decidedly anti-Christian behavior, hate statements, attacks on the undeserving, minorities, weak and victimized people - I mean, seriously - just try to picture Jesus doing what Pat does every day. Does Pat have a kind word for some shunned by society? Shit, no. Pat kicks 'em while they're down, man, and if they're not down, he'll do his part to put them there. Once your eyes are open, you can never again not see the fact that Pat Robertson is a primary functioning agent of the Evil Atheist Agenda with a job to do.

And he's doing it.

Your Nightmares Are True

Deep in your atrophied and shrunken black poison pump, you knew it all along. The voices in the night, in your head, in abandoned hallways and in the back of liquor stores behind dumpsters and prostitutes told you who the hell he was, all along - and they were right.

Obama's got a pineal eye - they cover it with make-up - and he's a leader captain general of the vanguard of an invading race from beyond this dimension with perceptions that far outstrip anything a burgeoning panopticon can muster; he sees when you are sleeping/he knows when you're awake/he knows when you're a lying terrorist who needs a CIA drone up the ass. He's not American - he's quantum-American from a space dimension all around you invisible - that's how he's warping so many minds.

He's coming out of a toxic cloud of painless opium fumes and stale cigarette smoke straight out of a 1950's cathouse and he's snatching up your guns and your knives and your cudgels and your Dixie flags and your weapons so that when he comes around with his pan-racial, post-racial racist agenda - hating everyone that's not the mix he is, exactly - you're defenseless, and you have to wear the featureless grey coverall as institutional non-race mayonnaise post-consumer no property Lennon/Lenin communism kicks in under a totalitarian regime we asked for, we begged for, because we let that smooth-talking motherfucker into the White House and he didn't save us, he didn't save our country from itself, he saved it for himself, the last and most delectable treat on the tree of conquest. The government's going to get so goddamn big that you'll be able to see it standing on your neck while it's walking away in front of you and yet - it'll still seem like everything's out of control and going down the shitter because the chaos makes you seek comfort from the father figure daddy Obama.

Barack Obama's going to force abortions on everyone - he's going to do the abortions himself as the man-in-black leader of a cadre of ruthlessly efficient abortibots designed to infiltrate and make certain that everyone has a forced abortion and birth control rammed down their gullets like everyone's a fertile musket of baby-making madness and the only way to control the flow is to black bag your children in the dead of night, mandatory birth control for all sexes, forced abortions that you can write off on your taxes and the utter destruction of Christ's church here on Earth under the foot of a giant Pro-Abortion Monster wearing an Obama loincloth and talking like Tarzan but with Janene Garofalo's voice.

Despite his affiliation with a controversial Christian Church, he's a Muslim. A secret Muslim who manages somehow to promote the secret and shadowy agenda of Islamists everywhere while also speaking up for women's equality, gay marriage and praying - secretly - five times a day under the watchful eye of the Secret Service. He learned his Islamist ideology and secret handshake and agreed in a blood and semen pact to corrupt America for terrorism in a madrassa in a foreign country because of course, in spite of his birth certificate, which is an expert fake concocted by allies who manipulated media to create Barack Hussein Obama as a candidate in the first place - brainwashing you all - he was born somewhere else. In another fucking dimension, I know, but you don't know that, you only feel it. The big trick is, though - he doesn't believe a word of it, because he's got a personal relationship with the alien space god through his connections as the pan-dimensional messiah of hope and change. It's a good train; get on it.

He's gay, too. He's a gayesque bisexual pansexual straight guy who's just cool enough to get it on with anything that moves, and he's going to force the omnisexual agenda down the throats of all straight people everywhere like a load from a fully fluffed and hung damn ready pornstar just waiting to pump you full of hot ideological ejaculate that will disgust you all and damn you to hell and erode gender lines and whatever else you're afraid of, because that's what he is - the embodiment of all your fears, phobia made flesh, walking, talking, looking cooler than you, staying calm, cool and collected, a near-emotionless robot drone on a mission to bomb your America into dust and replace it with conspiracy Shadow America, waiting just beneath the surface - a quick left and you're there.

The media sold you a comprehensive nightmare, and you all bought in, with your hysteria and your need for change and promise of a new day - and you'll get it, cold sweating and wrapped in chintzy sheets under a steel-cold dawn and riding on the back of a mongrel demon from places you can't bear to consider. We know you believe it, and for you that's like knowing, and in the swirl of thoughts that echo in your brainpan you can't exactly nail down but you know you're in a nightmare of filth and lies and you can't figure out how this happened and you're surrounded all the time.

Your madness is real. Obama is the impossible sum of all of these things. Nightmare made flesh.

It's all under control.

Have a nice day.