Armageddon

When it comes to the end of the world, at least in Biblical mythology, including prophecy, you get various buzz phrases like: Book of Revelation; the Apocalypse; Armageddon; the Second Coming; the End of Days, etc. There’s been more than just a minor industry spawned by this concept. So, we’ve had the hype, where’s the substance?

  

Biblical prophecy forecasts the end of the world, the end of days, doomsday, the apocalypse, Armageddon, call it what you will. Well, maybe yes, and maybe no. On the “yes” side of the fence are the true believers, the loony rightwing of the Christian faith.

It would seem that every time there is a natural disaster (even oil spills qualify), anywhere in the world, but especially in America, right-wing Christian fundamentalists and television evangelists jump for joy, do high fives and are more than happy to point out, even gleefully telling “I told you so”, and the more the destruction, the better the mayhem, the greater the death toll, the higher they jump, the happier they are and the more they rub their hands gleefully together. Why? It’s to them yet another sign that the end of days are near. Yet…

In mythology (or religious mythology) there really is no permanent end of the world. There’s always a rebirth, be it the Christian Armageddon or the Norse Ragnarok or within the Hindu mythology in India or even the various cyclic Mesoamerican cosmologies.

Take the Norse Ragnarok. The gods and the giants battle it out and the gods come out second best. But, there are survivors who start things up all over again. It’s reflected in the Richard Wagner conclusion to his epic four linked opera series “Der Ring Des Nibelungen”. The final opera, “Gotterdammerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”) ends with the destruction of the gods, but a rebirth and a new beginning. The very characters who started off the whole Ring Cycle are the very same and only survivors at the end. Will history repeat itself?

Take the Christian version: Well there’s no disputing the Biblical (tall) tales that ‘document’ some sort of domestic disagreement between ‘God’ and some sort of entity we call today ‘Satan’. If you believe those Biblical tall tales, the end result of that domestic dispute, Armageddon, isn’t in fact in dispute. There’s a decided element here of “This ain’t over till it’s over; this ain’t finished yet; I’ll be back”! However, when all is said and done, there will emerge from the ashes a new earth and a new heaven. Now we have the first fly in the ointment.

If you believe the Bible and the Book of Revelation, then you realise that Armageddon should have taken place over 1900 plus years ago, at least according to Jesus Christ. He said that the final battle between good (‘God’) and evil (‘Satan’) – I bet he was biased in deciding who was what – would take place within a generation or two of his utterances. So, if it took place way back then it took place off planet and out of human sight – a real life ‘Star Wars’. But if it hasn’t happened yet, assuming ‘God’ and ‘Satan’ are really real extraterrestrials instead of mythological entities, then it probably isn’t ever likely to. I mean you can only hold off a grudge match so long. Maybe they’ve kissed and made up, or…   

If God or His scribes wished to make crystal clear the ideas and events and chronology central to ‘the end of the world’, the Book of Revelation, Armageddon, the rapture, the second coming, etc., He or they failed – miserably. Any dozen Biblical scholars will give a dozen different interpretations of the ‘end of days’, from the literal to the metamorphic. The Book of Revelation, apparently that is, was intended for those of that era; that it was intended for generations far removed from those times is apparently not the case according to Biblical scholars. If you’re not going to make your point clear, well, what’s the point? How many hundreds upon hundreds of times have Biblical scholars prophesied the end of the world, or the end of days, or Armageddon, or the second coming, or final judgment (take your pick of relevant phrases) based on the Biblical verse? Well, we’re still here! We are indeed still here, so, so much for the reliability of The Bible, or God’s word, and/or the competence of so called Biblical experts. So, the next time some Bible-thumping fundamentalist tells you that the ‘end is nigh’, take said message with a proverbial grain of salt and don’t lose any sleep over it!

It wasn’t quite the end of the world, but the Biblical tale of the global flood is in fact global! Cultures from around the world tell similar tales to the Biblical flood. The argument is that therefore the story must be true as these diverse cultures had no contact with each other. My answer to that is related to bovine fertilizer! End of the world tales, or myths, the concept of Armageddon, punishing the wicked with total catastrophe was as common and popular then as now. We all love a good ‘end of the world’ story that has a moral attached. Alas, the choices or mechanisms available for said end of the world stories to myth makers’ way back then were rather limited. They had no knowledge of supernovae or gamma-ray bursts or massive solar flares or nuclear war and resulting holocausts or killer asteroids smacking into Planet Earth, etc. All they had to work with was the day-to-day sorts of routine natural events part and parcel of their daily lives. In fact, many tale-spinners might not have been familiar with, say, volcanoes, and while most relatively violent weather phenomena, like tornadoes, may be destructive, they aren’t destructive enough to wipe out the wicked that populate a wide area.  However, everyone would have experienced rain, heavy rain, even torrential rain say from hurricanes, etc. that resulted in minor flooding, or say witnessed storm surges from the sea that inundated the land, and/or witnessed rivers, ponds and lakes overflowing. It doesn’t take that much imagination to notch up minor real events, in the guise of storytelling, to mega disaster proportions. If it rains heavily for one day and there’s some local flooding, up the ante to 40 days. It’s difficult to imagine any storyteller from 5000 years ago coming up with any other sort of end of the world scenario!

The one point to the end of the world, mega disaster stories is that there must be at least one survivor to tell the tale! I gather in this case that includes survivors such as Noah and kin.
I have read of one other explanation for universal flood stories. If I recall correctly, a student of Freud came up with the idea that the tellers/inventors of flood tales got the idea from dreams in their sleep. And they dreamed the dream all because they were asleep with relatively full bladders. Personally, I think that’s a piss-weak explanation!

Now most of the end of the world prophecies tends to have religious overtones, as in Armageddon and the Biblical Book of Revelation. I’ve noted on the Internet one 54 year old Californian religious loony who is absolutely convinced he would be part of the rapture on the 21^st of May, 2011. That’s it – that’s the judgement day, the second coming of Christ, the end of the world as we know it. I predict that he was very disappointed when he woke up in his California abode on the 22^nd of May 2011 in a totally un-raptured state. I really shouldn’t single him out, it wasn’t he who came up with that date, yet still he got sucked into the frenzy. Over the millennium he’s but one of millions of loonies who got sucked into the end of the world frenzy!

It’s a pity that so many peoples’ lives are so miserable that they literally look forward to someone else (God or Jesus Christ) ending their mundane existence of everyday mortality and transporting them into another one of peaceful eternity, although who really knows, maybe it’s a case of going from the frying pan into the fire! 

However, there’s a dark side to the forces behind prophecy. The central focus, as always, is me, myself, and I. If you’re reading the astrology horoscope, what it predicts for your next door neighbour is probably of no consequence to you. However, if someone predicts that the world is about to go down the gurgler; that the end is neigh, well, you’re part of the world, so you’re heading down the gurgler too! Now that may, or may not, upset you. For religious reasons, many look forward to the world going down the gurgler, because that means that they, while going down the gurgler too, get deposited at the other end of the tube into an eternal paradise. Or so they believe. 

Unfortunately people who are suckered into believing that on such-and-such a date they, along with everybody else, are going to meet their maker, well that can have serious consequences. There are more than a handful of case studies which have shown that ordinary people, caught up in the end-of-the-world hype, lacking the qualities of logical and critical thinking, have sold off all their worldly goods, left their homes and families, to await the end – which never came. Some have banded together to form end-of-the-world doomsday cults which have required suicidal philosophies as the alleged end drew near. Human delusion can have tragic consequences.

There are several downsides to end of the world prophecy. It’s not the same sort of harmless fun as consulting your daily horoscope in the paper. Firstly, there’s the letdown, trauma, disappointment, humiliation, etc. suffered by the true believers when their idiocy is revealed for the entire world to see. There’s the often bizarre behaviour of true believers before-the-fact – the break-up of family units, giving away all worldly goods and possessions, joining doomsday cults, sometimes to the tune of ritual suicides.

Then there’s the lack of moral, ethical, law and order constraints – I mean if you really wanted for once in your life to live the good life, the best foods, the best wines, the most expensive resorts, the best women money can buy, all the fantasy dreams of the great unwashed, and you truly believed you only had a week to go before The End, well there’s this bank down the road just begging to be robbed and a certain snooty little teller who’s been asking for an extra hole in her head right between the eyes – how dare she turn you down for a date – well, why not? You’re dead in a week anyway, so nothing much to lose is there?

Now extrapolate that up to a true believer who does hold some high position of real power. What if you could manipulate foreign policy in such a way as to ensure or bring forward Armageddon? Or, if the world’s going to end tomorrow anyway and you believe that with all your heart and soul that’s going to be the case, well you may as well press the nuclear button now. The leader of your most hated foreign power is laughing at your stupidity, so you’re going to want to make sure it’s doomsday for them too! 

There have been thousands of end of the word prophecies from the religious Armageddon as given in the Biblical Book of Revelation to predictions of alien invasions to nuclear suicide as per the “On the Beach” scenario or maybe some ‘the-sky-is-falling’ alarmist who’s convinced there’s an undetected and undetectable asteroid that’s heading our way – ground zero; target Earth.  It ain’t happened – the asteroid anyway – to us, but T-Rex would tell a different tale methinks. T-Rex aside, anyone who places any sort of faith that the next prophetic quack has got it right is in serious delusion. The odds favour the exact opposite. Mother Earth will go on her merry way for a long time yet. If you’re anxiously awaiting the rapture – well, be prepared to wait a lot longer.

The next predicted doomsday biggie is the 21^st of December 2012 for a whole potful of various reasons that’s relatively easy to find out about given hundreds of books, articles, Internet sites and blogs, DVDs, etc. all devoted to the subject. So, hands up please for all of you who have total conviction that the next end of the world prediction will bear fruit, 21 December 2012. Thought so!  Well, I’ll go on the record now as prophesizing that it’s going to be quite safe for you to plan your 2012 Christmas and post-Christmas activities and holidays and welcome in 2013 with the usual New Year antics we’ve all come to love and participate in. How so?

There’s one really main problem with end of the world prophecy, and it doesn’t matter a hoot what your ultimate source is that you base, or believe, the prophecy on – to date, 100% of all end of the world predictions have failed (that’s bloody obvious isn’t it? I mean we’re still here; we’re still standing)! If I’d received a fiver for each failed doomsday prediction, I, my bank manager and the tax man would all be happy little campers. A 100% failure record - that’s a pretty piss-poor track record, 100% opposite to science predicting a solar eclipse three decades down the track. Now if there have been just a handful of these the-end-is-nigh predictions, and I mean down to the exact day of the year, well that could easily be dismissed. However, when the absolute number of them, over the millennia, have been such that if you’d collected a fiver for every one, and that collection of fivers would make you one of the wealthiest persons on the planet, well you’ve have to conclude that there’s an awful lot of deluded people. A 100% track record of failure inspires bugger-all confidence that the next quack or gaggle of quacks that comes along with an ‘end-is-neigh’ sign can be taken seriously, such as the 21^st of May 2011 or the 21^st of December 2012.

Further reading: The end of the world in prophecy.  

Guyatt, Nicholas; Have A Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World; Ebury Press, UK; 2007:

Kirsch, Jonathan; A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization; Harper-Collins, New York; 2006:

Price, Robert M.; The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind; Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 2007:

Willis, Barbara & Willis, Jim; Armageddon Now: The End of the World A to Z; Visible Ink Press, Detroit, Michigan; 2006:

The All-God: All This, All That, All the Next Thing

God is certainly considered by the faithful to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and of course omni-warm and omni-fuzzy. He’s also as omni-conceited as they come. But all that’s irrelevant since the All-God has the all-quality of non-existence.

If you tend to accept much of the theology surrounding the concept of a monotheistic God, then you accept that that God is infinite in terms of various attributes like being in all places at all times; possessing all knowledge (past, present and future); having infinitely more powers than Superman with no worries about heavenly or hellishly kryptonite, and having an infinite amount of compassion for those great unwashed moulded in His image, etc. Not only is that theology total nonsense, there are various other attributes of a near infinite nature that God possesses, like a massive ego except that theology too is flawed since you can’t have an ego if you don’t exist.

Is the All-God All-Present, All-Anywhere, All-Everywhere?

Since the Almighty is a physical being, after all He utters sounds and physically causes physical things to happen, as such He cannot be in all places at all times. A physical object, even a deity, cannot be in two places at the same time. That’s just total nonsense. Scratch omnipresent.

Is the All-God All-Loving, All-Merciful, All-Compassionate, and All-Forgiving?

“Yes” you say?  You have got to be joking! Have those spouting off such nonsense actually read the Old Testament? From the universal flood, to Sodom and Gomorrah, to the tenth plague, to the invasion of the Land of Canaan, to countless other large-scale right down to the small-scale, even individual (Abraham and Job) atrocities committed, God is the driving force. Hitler in his wildest dreams couldn’t conceive of such death and destruction as God inflicted on not only His enemies, but also on His own Chosen People. Would a compassionate God create hell, fire and brimstone to hold over the heads of His subjects as a means of potential eternal punishment like a sword of Damocles? If ‘military intelligence’ is a contradiction in terms, even more so is the phrase ‘loving God’. I’d sooner take my chances with ‘a loving person-eating shark’!  Please scratch omni-warm and omni-fuzzy from your theology.

Is the All-God All–Knowing?

If God is all knowing, what’s the point in the whole creation business? There’s no fun or satisfaction to a creation if you know to the tiniest detail, exactly what will happen at each and every moment to everything, everyone, and everywhere. Would your life be worth living if at say age 10, you had absolute knowledge of your future and knew exactly what each and every future second would be like for you in advance and that nothing could be altered? Nothing unexpected; no surprises would ever happen. So God created Adam and Eve, but since God is alleged to be an all-knowing God, then He knew even then what would happen in the Garden of Eden, so why bother instructing Adam and Eve not to eat forbidden fruit? What would be the point? That’s why people don’t usually want to be told the resolution to a film they haven’t yet seen. If you’re told before-the-fact whodunit, why see the film or read the novel?

That applies equally to that final Biblical Book of Revelation. The Bible is God’s Holy Word. Revelation is therefore God’s Holy Word. Everything that is to come is spelt out in detail. The ending is not in doubt. How the ending is achieved is not in doubt. God knows all of this in advance. Satan, being a literate sort of entity, knows all of this as well. Therefore, what’s the point in enacting out the scenario? If everyone has to go through the fixed Revelation scenario, then that confirms everything is predestined and that there is no such thing as Free Will despite God’s utterances to the contrary. Just like in a novel or a film, the plot plays out the exact same each and every time. The characters have no choice but to follow the plot line – they have no Free Will. Scratch omniscient.

Is the All-God All-Powerful?

If God can not prevent evil, then God is not all powerful. If God can prevent evil, but chooses not to, then God is hardly benevolent (i.e. – not omni-warm and omni-fuzzy). If God allows evil to exist in humans, and God created humans, then God must share some responsibility for that evil. It’s akin to parents having to shoulder responsibility if their child or children runs amuck.

God is not all-powerful since not even God can get around the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, which states that it is impossible to know simultaneously any particle’s precise position and trajectory.

Presumably, God, like gravity, and anything comprised of mass and/or energy can’t operate at faster than light speed. If God wants to smite you down, and God is ten light-years away, then you’re safe for a decade before His bolt of lightning hits you.

If God exists in a physical location within the Universe, then God can’t know about an event until the light (or other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum; or gravity) from that event reaches God. Since light has a finite speed, God is in the ‘dark’ as it were until the light and information it contains reaches God. For example, if God is residing on Planet Earth, and for some reason our Sun goes supernova, God (as well as the rest of humanity) won’t know about it for other eight-plus minutes – the time it takes light to reach Earth from the Sun. God is powerless to act until that eight-plus minutes have elapsed.

Not even God can change the past. I mean, there are any number of instances where to correct some mistake; it would have been easier to backtrack in time and undo something, like going back in time and posting a “No Trespassing: Keep Out: Serpents Will Be Shot On Sight: This Means You” sign at the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Not even God can accomplish something that is self-contradictory, like creating a spherical cube or a cubical sphere! Not even God can draw more than one straight line between two points on a flat piece of paper.

If God is all-powerful, why did God need to rest on the 7^th day? Scratch omnipotent.

Is the All-God for All-People?

If you believe the Bible, God has His Chosen People – the Hebrews. God has His Promised Land for His Chosen People. That Promised Land isn’t America (far less California) or Australia/New Zealand or Europe (with or without Great Britain) or Antarctica or Asia or Africa or Russia, etc. Those Chosen Peoples aren’t the Italians, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Aboriginals, the Amerindians, the Polynesians or the Turks, and especially not the Egyptians! The Promised Land is the Land of Canaan, now called Israel; The Chosen People are, obviously, the Israelites. In fact the Bible (King James Version) makes crystal clear, not once, but 201 times that God is the “God of Israel”. So, if you ain’t associated with God’s Chosen People and God’s Promised Land, it’s impossible to believe that you are one of those in God’s holy grace! In short, it’s safe to give God your Big Middle Finger, even both of them!

On the other hand, some will quote Romans 3: 29 which indeed suggest that the All-God is for all-people, Jews and Gentiles alike. But then too that’s part of the warmer and fuzzier New Testament. The God of the Old Testament showed a lot more bias towards just one tiny segment of society. The proof of that pudding, neatly summed up, can be found in Deuteronomy 7:6 “For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” The LORD thy God wasn’t referring to Americans despite some Americans referring to the United States as ‘God’s own country’ and California as ‘the promised land’.  

Is the All-God All-Up Himself?

Well let’s just say the phrase used by God in reference to Himself, “I am” is very, very frequently used. “I am the LORD” can be found 161 times in the King James Version of the Bible. This is clarified 33 times – “I am the LORD your God” and clarified an additional 7 times as in “I am the LORD thy God”.  What do you make of the phrase “I am the Almighty God” or “I am Alpha and Omega”? What about “I am a great king, saith the LORD”. Not even former baseball star Reggie (“This team, it all flows from me. I’m the straw that stirs the drink”) Jackson, or boxer Cassius (“I am the greatest”) Clay (otherwise better known by his alter ego pseudonym of Muhammad Ali), just to single out two individuals from tens of thousands of similar mindsets from all walks of life from around the world, had as big an ego as the Almighty!

Finally, the All-God’s All Non-Existence

God does in fact have one ‘All’ quality. He’s an all-nothing. God, the supernatural deity, doesn’t exist. He’s been a no-show for thousands of years. If God, assuming a God, really did exist; it would be simplicity itself to prove His existence to the faithful believers and atheist alike. No Old Testament person who has claimed an up close and personal contact with God can in turn be historically verified from any non-Biblical source(s). There’s absolutely nothing within the sum total of life, the Universe and everything that can be attributed to a deity and only to a deity. Those who choose to put faith in non-verifiable supernatural happenings that orbit around a Supreme Being are of course entitled to do so. They are equally as entitled to believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. At least that holy trinity has bona-fide evidence to support their existence, as any child will testify to!

Divine Right: Born to the Lurk & Perk: Part Two

What is the ultimate origin of the concept of ‘born to rule’ or of ‘divine right’? Why should someone who just happened to be the product of a particular sperm cell and a particular egg cell require worship as if they were a god? Does it have anything to do with real supernatural deities anointing those with the ‘right stuff’ genetics, those who they see fit to rule, or perhaps there’s a more intimate connection. Perhaps in fact it’s all nonsense.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

I’ve frequently used the word parasite(s) in the connection of those born to rule. Why parasites? Well a parasite feeds off the system, be it an intestinal worm in the animal’s gut getting a free feed from the host’s food intake or the royals free feeding off British society (and by extension all those who claim divine right to lurks and perks even if not absolute rule right throughout the world). A parasite may not overly harm the host, but it causes no real benefit either, unlike say a symbiotic relationship where all parties benefit. So what’s their version of the free lunch apart from those palaces, yachts, Rolls Royce’s, carriages, etc?

Presumably they are civil servants of some sort and therefore draw off the public purse. All their lavish residences require 24/7/52 security, paid for by the public. Security forces that could be better and more gainfully employed acting as security for the many and not for the extreme few. Anytime they are out in public there’s a massive security operation, crowd and traffic control, etc. That takes for many police, etc. (unavailable for more important duties for the duration). If they are out and about, the great unwashed can be expected to be brushed aside and inconvenienced while the royals get those royal preferences – no red lights, no rush hour traffic, no going through airline security measures like metal detectors and having bags checked and X-rayed at airports and then waiting patiently their turn to taxi and takeoff. I doubt very much if they are subject to customs checks and duties.

So what do they do to earn their legit place in society and thus refute my use of the term parasite?

Well I gather the queen of the day (or king) opens up Parliament on the first day of a newly elected Parliament. The queen (or king) gets to read out a speech that’s prepared in advance for her. Hard work indeed since that happens only about once every three years! Once in a blue moon she extends the favour to one of her colonies, should she be in the right place at the right time.

Then Queen Liz gets to deliver live on your TV screen her annual Christmas message. Well, to be sure, she delivers it, but she doesn’t write it – that’s way too much like real work, and anyway, that’s what royal speech writers are hied for. Ho, Ho, Ho.

The royals host lots of morning and afternoon tea parties or social gatherings for the upper crusts of society – that elite 1%. Tough life that.

Apart from playing with their pet dogs (corgis), riding the royal horses for polo tournaments and for chasing and shooting foxes, the most exercise they get is to wave and smile to their adoring public on those various but relatively rare public occasions. It’s good PR to appear in public on occasion, though I’m sure they find that a boring and burdensome chore, just as movie stars and sporting ‘heroes’ eventually get tired of having to appear up close and personal for their adoring and ever pestering fans. Of course nobody dares ask Queen Liz for her autograph! 

But since there’s since some tatters of a British Empire yet to administer, they, especially the head (the current Queen Liz) need to (have others) pack their bags and join the jet set and visit those far away places with strange sounding names, where they will get to wave and smile a zillion times more (for the unwashed 99%) and wine and dine with the local versions of the elite 1%. It’s all just PR; no actual administration is usually performed. “Boring” I rather suspect they probably mutter behind closed doors, especially after it’s the twelfth time around. Let’s all shed an itty-bitty tear for the queen, or her stand-in relatives who are expected to keep that stiff-upper-lip and enjoy being bored. 

But part of that administration is the Queens Birthday Honours List and the Queen’s New Years Honours List, where lots of her subjects get all manner of rather archaic and outdated medals and initials to put after their names, all for various services rendered. Now the royals don’t actually have to do any real work here since the lists are prepared by the various colonial governments of the day, as well as that of the government of England herself. The royals just rubber stamp everything, since they don’t know (and probably really care less about) these people so honoured that set them slightly apart from any other of the millions of other odd bods and sods – their royal subjects. The royals aren’t really expected to have details about these royally honoured subjects filed away in their royal wetware – that’s what they well-heeled staff are there to brief them on. A small fraction of the recipients will front and centre at some palace or other to get their medals in person (usually the London locals) which probably taxes the mental and physical reserves of the royal they are presented to, right royally. Life’s a bitch and then you die, right?

At least Queen Liz supports the hat industry. Has anyone seen her in public without her wearing some sort of horrendous looking hat? At least I’m sure you’d only see it once. Queen Liz would never be caught out wearing the same hat in public twice!

Another right royal hardship is just having to endlessly stop and smell those roses that are forever presented to them – and look appreciative. In fact it’s just about mandatory for lots of adoring school girls in particular to present bouquet after bouquet after bouquet to any right royal parasite within pre-announced range. I’ve sure the royals have collected over the years more flowers than that which collectively go into the annual New Years Day Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade that precedes the college football Rose Bowl game. What a waste of flowers. 

But even the royals have to shed a bit of privacy now for the sake of PR by allowing in camera crews and filmmakers to film and make documentaries for TV and DVD about the royals and the royal palaces and the royal lifestyles. All this shows is how extremely far removed the royals are from even the relatively well off elite 1%; the great unwashed 99% are light-years away.

Even when the young royal males join the military after their exclusive private schooling, nearly a mandatory obligation for keeping up appearances, you can be sure the royal recruits (in particular the next in line to the throne – the future king of England) are going to be treated with velvet gloves; get very rapid promotions, and are never really put into serious harms way, regardless of postings. How would it look if the heir to the throne got zapped in combat? Bad show old chap, to be avoided at all costs!

But are the royals unique?

The President of the United States (POTUS) may have just about as many taxpayer funded lurks and perks, but a lot less job security and not nearly the wealth. In any event, POTUS is only POTUS for a maximum of eight years; once king or queen, you’re king or queen for life with no competition; no election campaigns, no speeches, no fundraising and absolutely no kissing babies, no elections at all to have to face. How a POTUS wannabe must envy those born to rule. 

The Pope may also come close in the uppity-uppity elite bracket, but like POTUS, he still had to move up the ranks and claw his way to the top (with or without outside assistance).  

Surely there are many of the 1% elite who just happened to be born into wealth, even extreme wealth, who lead the total life of a playboy (or playgirl) and who via their inheritance might never have to do an honest days work – ever. Quite so, but there’s still a massive gap between those (less than) 1% who just inherit the good life, and those 1% of the 1% who are born to the good life because god says so. No matter how rich and famous you are, you can never, ever, command the sorts of lurks and perks that befit those entitled to the title of ‘royal’. The royals are in a total class of and by themselves. 

So what lurks and perks flow on to the great 99% unwashed from the 1% of the 1%. Well I guess the colonies get to ‘celebrate’, the queen’s birthday, which is as phoney as a $7 bill since any similarity between the given holiday and the date of the actual birthday is problematical. The two don’t tend to coincide. Still, the masses aren’t one to begrudge a holiday day off. Otherwise, apart from the privilege of collecting those royal marriage commemorative coins (or any other royal souvenirs of which there exists an industry in its own right), the royals are a right royal irrelevance to the rest of the world. Off with their heads – that’s my motto!

Divine Right: Born to the Lurk & Perk: Part One

What is the ultimate origin of the concept of ‘born to rule’ or of ‘divine right’? Why should someone who just happened to be the product of a particular sperm cell and a particular egg cell require worship as if they were a god? Does it have anything to do with real supernatural deities anointing those with the ‘right stuff’ genetics, those who they see fit to rule, or perhaps there’s a more intimate connection. Perhaps in fact it’s all nonsense.

Mythologies are full of sexual liaisons between the divine and the human. Just like the ‘Sons of God’ mated with the ‘Daughters of Men’ and the Greco-Roman gods and goddesses mated with mortals (to cite two of numerous case histories), resulting offspring would have been descended from the gods and thus weren’t quite your ordinary Joe and Josephine Blow, with membership in that great unwashed club of the public citizen. So, what’s it about these special descendents of the gods – demigods and demigoddesses? Why are they a cut (or two or twenty) above the rest of us?

But first, let’s substitute supernatural gods for flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials, ‘ancient astronauts’ who actually had an up-close-and-personal hand in the origin and evolution of the human species (another common thread of all things mythological, albeit interpreted in a religious or supernatural context). 

Well, if you really are a genetic product of an alien, of a technological advanced extraterrestrial, I guess that does make you a cut or twenty above those who can’t claim an out-of-this-world parentage. Gods or aliens (same difference IMHO), well they fawn on their half-breed descendents as something special – the go-betweens twixt them and the great unwashed. Those go-betweens are those born to rule by divine right (divine being a property of said gods or aliens they bestowed on their go-betweens).  

There’s no shortage of historical examples – from the kings and queens of Europe to the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the emperors of ancient China and Japan. All had the direct authority of God or the gods behind them; many were also worshiped as deities in their own right and as such could claim ancestral lineage back to their gods.

That was then; now is now. Surely in today’s society nobody actually believes those who were born to rule were actual offspring descendens of the gods or ET or anointed by same as being of extraordinary leadership stock that would be passed down from generation to generation forever and ever.  In fact there would be those few and far between who would justify in fact that anyone anymore is born to actually rule because of ‘superior’ ancestors. So rather than those born to rule who actually rule, instead those now born to rule are just for all practical purposes figureheads. The British colonies, like Australia, are now democracies like England; ditto other European countries that retain some sort of royalty. Japan is a democracy too though there are those alive today who recall when the Japanese emperor was a literal god.

The question is, if those born to rule don’t in most cases actually rule, but are mere figureheads, why not get rid of these divine right parasites, be they kings or queens or emperors or empresses, even sultans; parasites who serve no useful function yet lead lavish lifestyles? Egypt got rid of the pharaoh. China booted out the emperor. It’s not that hard. Still, that’s not yet the general way of the world, so let’s… 

Fast-forward a bit to the general concept of heads or figureheads of nations that were born to rule. They are not elected officials who claim no ancestry from the divine; they are not those who took power and who rule by force – dictators, tyrants, etc. that can’t trace their lineage or ancestry back to the gods (even if some dictators claim otherwise and demand their subjects so treat them as gods too). So fast-forward to those who become leaders or rulers (leadership is sometimes in short supply) just because their parents were rulers and their grandparents before them and back and back it goes.

Authority based on divine right; authority vested because of an eventual connection (however remote) back to the gods and the gods’ anointment of them and their descendents to rule forevermore, cuts no mustard with me.

I’ve always found it difficult to accept that just because the sperm of a king or emperor meets the egg of a queen or empress that the resulting product is somehow better and more deserving at being a ruler than the resulting offspring of any other male/female conception. Yet apparently millions of people have and some still do accept that as a given. You are born to rule by divine right because you were born to those who were born to rule by divine right who in turn were, etc.

Yet as far as I can tell, such born to rule offspring (usually firstborn males) have to sit on the throne in the same manner as the rest of us and put their pants on one leg at a time. They require all of the sorts of stuff we mortals that belong to the lower class, the great unwashed do – stuff like oxygen, water, food, sleep, medical care, etc. In short, there’s no special distinguishing feature of any kind that separates them from us other than a total accident of having a divine or ‘royal’ sperm meet an egg (probably of similar lineage) for their conception. A naked baby that’s heir to the throne looks no different than a naked baby that’s the offspring of commoners. So in short, divine right, even if it ultimately derived from the ‘gods’ – or those ‘ancient astronauts’ - gets no respect from me since those claiming divine right, that born to rule status, don’t have to earn anything; an elected official at least earns his or her right to rule.

Here’s a modern case history (though their roots go back seemingly forever) of those who rule (now in pretty much in just a figurehead capacity) by divine right and thus haven’t earned any respect from yours truly. I refer to the English / British / Commonwealth royal family, in particular their head, Queen Liz.

Now it’s topical in America to compare and contrast the masses, the ordinary Americans, the 99%, with those extremely wealthy elites, the 1%. In British terms, Queen Liz and her royal family parasites are akin to the top 1% of the top British 1%, and the 99% remaining of that 1% just eat what to the royal family would be table scraps, albeit tasty table scraps. The lowest 99% just eat symbolic three day old and relatively stale cake – and they love it.

Now I must admit that the English apparently do right royally love their royal parasites. That’s probably because they help contribute a sense of history (now long vanished) and a pride of place (equally gone) part and parcel of once being the stiff-upper-lipped British (‘Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the Waves’; ‘The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire’, ‘Be British, lads’, etc.). However, in more practical terms, the royals help bring in zillions of tourist dollars a year. Overseas tourists to England have as a must-see on their itinerary at least one royal palace and getting themselves snapped in front of same, with a place guard or two in the photo as well. Of course fat lot of good that does, either the sense of history slant, or the tourist dollar reality, to the colonies like Canada, or New Zealand, or South Africa or Australia, among all those other British colonies.

The colonies aside for the moment, just what sort of lurks and perks do these right royal parasites command? Well, with a snap of the royal fingers they can command ocean going yachts, private jets, horse-drawn carriages, and transport in the finest fleet of Rolls-Royce automobiles money can buy. They live in multi-hundred room private estate castles in England, Scotland, and probably elsewhere, all sited on lush massive acreages where they can indulge in their favourite blood sport of fox hunting (tally-ho), and/or the not quite as bloody sport of polo.  

Queen Liz and family don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, which is certainly not going to be a Big Mac or fish-and-chips, and who’s going to cook, serve and wash up afterwards. They have massive staffs to cater for their every whim – even staff to dress them. They most certainly don’t make their own beds, cook their own meals, shine their own shoes, or any other manner of menial housework or chores. You don’t see Queen Liz pruning the royal rose bushes. They wouldn’t know what a vacuum cleaner was for if their life depended on it – which it doesn’t. They lose no sleep over the next set of incoming bills. They have medical, even veterinary staff, on call 24/7/52. Whatever they want or need, that whatever goes to them, not vice versa.

The royals most certainly do not stand in line for movie tickets or que in place at the supermarket checkout or join a bank line. They certainly have no need to join the unemployment line or que for social security benefits.

While I’m sure it must be just my imagination, the royals forever seem to be on holiday.

When any of the royal family gets married, there’s got to be an official legal tender commemorative coin (or some such) struck in their honour. Was there a commemorative anything minted when you got married or similar? No? Why not? What makes the royals deserving and not you?

While not a ‘lurk and perk’, the portrait of Queen Liz appears on all Australian coins (or at least those minted since she became Queen Liz). Why? She’s not Australian. She contributes nothing to Australian society. In fact she contributes nothing of any real note to society full stop. She’s not a health professional, nor a charity worker, a noted scientist, a military leader, a politician, author, poet, or artist of any kind. She’s a wife and mother of course but that hardly makes her stand out from the crowd. Besides, IMHO, only the dead should be honoured on stamps, coins, and related.

I gather she and kin pay some taxes now (that wasn’t always the case apparently), but again, that’s not a unique skill or legal obligation for which she and kin deserve a pat on the royal back for observing. Pats on the royal back by the way are an absolute no-no, but bowing and curtsying are mandatory etiquette in the presence of their company. 

Despite all of these unearned benefits due to just being born of the right parents and in the right place at the right time, you’d probably love to be a fly on the wall at their family gatherings. What little leaks out or gets captured by the paparazzi, show the royals are a totally dysfunctional and motley bunch. Anyone who is anyone who has following the shenanigans of the lesser royals in particular over the past several decades plus would be hard pressed to use any other term but dysfunctional, though several other choice words and phrases better left unsaid come close. All up they are certainly a few pence short of a pound. Queen Liz herself is probably the only relatively sane one of the bunch. 

To be continued…

Religious Hatred: The Westboro Baptist Church: Part Three

One tends to associate religious intolerance for other religions with bloodshed. The phrase ‘holy wars’ comes to the fore. However, the peace movement has come to religious hatred as well as in all other manner of protest movements. The most famous, or infamous, of the peaceful religious haters is probably the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). I’m sure many of the recipients of their hate would prefer the days of bloodshed so they could dish a bit something back in return.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

I also wonder if these idiots have a death or suicide wish. It’s not the best of ideas to Thank God for dead cops and soldiers when you reside in America’s heartland. The Ku-Klux-Klan isn’t exactly partial to the WBC either. And no doubt the Taliban wouldn’t mind showing the WBC some Islamic hospitality either. Friends come and friends go, but enemies accumulate. Accidents can happen when backs are turned.

The resident inmates of the WBC asylum apparently think God also hates those who mock Him. So I won’t mock Him, rather all the loonies who put their faith in the Holy Trinity equivalent of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, most notably God Himself. Those who I identify as loonies quite obviously include those wacko members at the WBC.

Now there’s a category of people and organizations well represented in say the “Guinness Book of Records” or “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not”. That category is those who have achieved their moment of fame and glory in the sunshine. Publicity seekers abound everywhere. There’s certainly a share of loony tunes – certified nut cases; there’s skilled daredevils and not so skilled risk takers. Many people like to do really crazy but relatively harmless things just for the hell of it and many do likewise as a means of raising money for various charities and other worthy causes. Thus they need all the PR they can get for their cause. But the bottom line is getting noticed, and you don’t get noticed if you’re part of the crowd. You’ve got to stand out from the crowd; dare to be different.  

But not all PR hounds are deliberately silly or daring or charitable. Shock-jocks shock to keep up their ratings. They also shock to keep up earning their multi-million dollar salaries, for example, a top shock-jock like Rush Limbaugh. Now Rush Limbaugh comes across as a total idiot; but total idiots don’t command huge listening audiences and vast, nearly obscene monetary rewards. So I strongly suspect that shock-jocks shock just because that’s part of their job description, not because they always actually believe the B.S. they spout off. But that’s their trade secret and they have to live with their often probably deliberate lies, hoping, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, the listening public can see through their charades.

America has more than her fair share of shock-jocks, including that especially one infamous name, Rush Limbaugh. Listeners tune in to see if their favorite shock-jock can outdo him or herself and top his or her previous outrageous rant with something even more outrageous. I’m sure they know this and deliberately stir the pot, though some like Limbaugh often cross the invisible line of what is and is not acceptable. 

The WBC is, IMHO, the religious equivalent of the radio shock-jock. In fact, my theory – I’m not alone here – Is that the WBC has bugger-all to do with religion and everything to do with keeping all of them the front-and-centre of attention. Your moment in the sun becomes a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade. This is getting publicity for the sake of publicity – lots of newspaper headlines and evening TV news coverage – and they don’t care who they psychologically hurt in the process. No amount of pleading will get the WBC to change their tactics, but they will call off their picket line hounds in exchange for extra free airtime. They have got attention-grabbing down to a fine art, and religious intolerance and extreme picketing and outrageous slogans are sure ways of getting attention. 

Their shock-jock tactics do have some rather chilling facets to them. First of these is their use of very young children who the WBC have carry their full-of-hate placards. The children are way too young to remotely comprehend the issues; they just parrot what the adults tell them too without such comprehension. Secondly, if you view their videos, you’ll notice, especially at the end, the narrator’s shit-eating-grin (SEG) expression - “You’re going to hell” (SEG); “Thank God for 9/11” (SEG), etc. The third chilling thing is that all of the numerous spokespersons come across as total believers in the nonsense they’re spouting off. Total sincerity or so it would seem. They have either been coached very well or totally brainwashed. You can just about imagine that bowl of tainted Kool-Aid in the WBC fridge waiting for the appropriate moment to ‘celebrate’ and go to their heavenly reward while everyone else has headed in the opposite direction.

In conclusion, the WBC membership is collectively just a bunch of PR hungry loonies who use religious themes (way out of context by the way) and outrageous tactics to attract attention and publicity as long as they stay ever so barely on the right side of the law while not caring who suffers emotional stress via their rants, raves, pickets, chants, songs, etc. Of course they deny that – it’s all about preaching “God’s hate” – but then again, such a theology is just bound to attract the sort of PR that they in fact, constantly get.

However, as my final wrap-up, there is some good news. Many WBC members, especially some high profile family members of the WBC leading lights, have decided to vote with their feet against the WBC and their version of God and pack it up and leave. Maybe there is a God after all! For details, see the BBC’s follow-up documentary “America’s Most Hated Family in Crisis” (2011).

The other good news trend is that the ungodly great unwashed, all those picketed and consigned to hell by the WBC, are fed up. Counter-pickets and wall-to-wall people blockades to prevent the WBC from strutting their picketing funerals stuff are becoming ever more frequent and so it is coming to pass that the members of the WBC are now tending to be outnumbered by ratios of dozens to one. When some of the counter demonstrators are hell-bent-for-leather motorcyclists, the sort that look as if they’d shoot first and ask questions later, it’s no wonder that it’s further coming to pass that the WBC frequently announces their picket but that’s equally followed by a no-show!   

By the by, if God is really on the side of WBC, you’d think He would have given them heavenly voices with which to sing their hatred songs. Let’s just say if you hear the WBC ‘choir’ sing their picket line songs, you’ll appreciate rap and hip-hop and even ethnic chanting (or is that wailing) in preference. WBC singers – don’t give up your day jobs! But, as an afterthought, perhaps instead WBC should picket with bagpipes a-blowing! That would show the world how much God hates ‘em!

While I’ve presented the above in a slightly less than a pure shock, horror manner, I’ve tried to keep things slightly light-hearted, there’s nothing light-hearted about the way the WBC have treated their victims. The WBC deserves no less than the severest condemnation that all feeling members of civilized society can muster against them. 

Religious Hatred: The Westboro Baptist Church: Part Two

One tends to associate religious intolerance for other religions with bloodshed. The phrase ‘holy wars’ comes to the fore. However, the peace movement has come to religious hatred as well as in all other manner of protest movements. The most famous, or infamous, of the peaceful religious haters is probably the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). I’m sure many of the recipients of their hate would prefer the days of bloodshed so they could dish a bit something back in return.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

To give you an idea of exactly what direction the WBC is coming from, here are some of their philosophies (in my own words) that appear to be central to the WBC worldview.

*Harking back to my introductory remarks, it would seem as if the WBC has set itself up as the authority on all that’s holy and godly. In fact, according to them, faith in any other religion is akin to devil worship. Tell that one to the pope; he could always use a good laugh given all the strife his organization is in. Of course it’s that very strife, sexual child abuse, that give the WBC the God-given right to state that the Catholic religion is a false religion, and by-God is the WBC position an example of anti-Catholicism.

*Whatever transpired in the Bible is the absolute literal truth. All events in the Bible panned out because God willed it so. So Noah’s riding the flood wave crests and Sodom & Gomorrah were literal disasters and practice sessions – God’s warm-ups to the coming of God’s Big Crunch against the modern world (presumably as outlined in the Book of Revelation).

*If the Bible says it’s a no-no, then it’s a no-no, and if the USA doesn’t endorse and enforce Biblical no-no’s then God’s going to boot and continue to boot America in the privates! Since America doesn’t endorse and enforce God’s Holy Word, well, anything and everything that’s nasty that befalls America is a sign God is pissed! God hates America! When America gets kicked in the privates, from the untimely death in combat of one soldier to the demise of hundreds in a hurricane – you know who is responsible!

*The Old Testament notwithstanding, God hates the Jews, because the Jews killed Jesus and the Jews support abortion and homosexuality (Biblical no-no’s), so in the opinion of the WBC, God sent the holocaust and thus the Jews got their just deserts.

*Homosexuality (“fags”) is sin number one. It’s the prime target of the WBC. God hates fags! If you’re gay, if you support the gay community, if you condone gay activities, God’s gonna get you! In fact, the entire gay community, all those who aren’t 100% heterosexual, should be put to death in accordance with Old Testament doctrine and practices.

*At least the WBC gets one brownie point since they do not support racism because the Bible doesn’t support racism. The Ku-Klux-Klan is not amused!

*President Obama is the antichrist. [He’s just one of hundreds so identified over the millennia so don’t put too much faith in that procrastination.]

*Any disaster, natural or otherwise (like 9/11), is a direct expression of God’s wrath, and that applies not just to America but anywhere and everywhere else in the world. When an earthquake hits China, or a tsunami hits Japan, or tornadoes rip across the U.S.A., it’s “Thank God” according to the WBC. Cop that you devil worshiping bastards! And that includes Islam. Mohammed gets the Big Finger from the WBC too. 

*There are no innocents. The child in the womb who died in the womb goes straight to hell too.

*You must “Thank God” for everything that happens, because everything that happens happens because God wills it to happen and anything God wills to happen must be for a good reason and thus God should be thanked for bringing you the benefits of His infinite goodness. That includes anything and everything that you may not personally think of as good. So if you’re seriously injured in a car crash, and your child is killed (and who is now in hell), you are to “Thank God” for that because God willed your injury and death and damnation of your child for a good reason (which is that God hates the both of you). Now aren’t you grateful?

*The WBC exists not to spread the word about God’s love, but about “God’s hate”.

*The WBC wants everyone (excepting themselves of course) to die horribly and burn in hell.

*Only the WBC – repeat, ONLY the WBC understands all of this; thus their warnings via those pickets and placards. In their hearts they know their messages will be unheeded, but that’s okay since that leaves them to become the be all and end all of God’s chosen few.

I had a quick check on an online Bible site to see if the Bible (King James Version) used the phrase anywhere that “God hates” – No. I guess the WBC likes putting words in God’s mouth!

I wonder in turn if the God of the Old Testament hates the WBC. He probably does since they’re not doing their full bit to contribute to the terrestrial quota of blood and guts that He likes spilled on His behalf. Actions speak louder than words, and when you come down to the nitty-gritty, the WBC are just spouting off words; lots of hot air. They huff and they puff and though they like dead cops and dead soldiers and dead fags, they won’t pull the trigger themselves. They don’t put their money where their mouths are. They should. It would give them real credibility and of course they could (and would) always claim that God made them do it. Still, the membership of the WBC gets to picket another day if they mind their peaceful ways. You can’t picket from a prison cell.

WBC logic screw-up number one: If in fact, as the WBC says, “God hates everybody” and “God hates America” then of necessity God hates all those members of the WBC since they collectively are part of “everyone” and they reside in America. So there! Though somehow I rather suspect they’d try to wiggle out of that logic somehow.

There’s another facet that shows up how screwy their logic is. Since all of these deaths by 1000 cuts (Katrina, 9/11, the war in Iraq, homicides, etc.) have been going on, and on, and on and on, it appears that God’s wrath is going to be exhibited as the nickel-and-dime-the-world approach to a long dragged out Armageddon. But for every 5 & 10 God’s wrath devours and deposits in hell, another 100 are born. Those births too must be “Thank God” events.  It’s self defeating. My reading is that if God were really that pissed, He wouldn’t toy with us via death by a thousand cuts – a cop here, a soldier there, a mass shooting the day after that with a now and again 9/11 type event thrown into the mix. God would just ring up the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and bring on the Book of Revelation scenario and just sort of nuke us and be done with it. WBC is a few nickels-and-dimes short of a dollar!

Yet another flaw in the WBC version of what passes for logic is their “Thank God for Dead…” The dead of course are those prematurely deceased human beings who are now in hell. But equally the WBC should “Thank God” for their births since of course by their logic God must have been the driving force behind their conceptions in the first bloody place. So that “Thank God for Dead…” makes no Godly sense whatsoever, unless it’s God’s plan to have people born only to be prematurely killed just to thus satisfy the theology of the WBC and give them a reason to picket and keep on preaching their hate. No, something screwy somewhere, like the mindset of the WBC, since when it comes to God and the WBC, logic is damned.  

This entire “Thank God for…” slogan can easily bite the WBC on the ass. Most of the leading lights at the WBC are well educated university graduates. You’d think that maybe they would hold up a sign that says “Thank God for education and academics” and protest that there should be more funding for education and teachers, etc. That would be constructive, but that’s not the way of the WBC – to be constructive that is.

By WBC logic, if you Thank God for dead cops and soldiers, because that’s God’s way, then you must also Thank God for live cops and live soldiers since they presumably are alive because that too is God’s will. Of course you won’t get the WBC to admit to that. If you Thank God for a tornado that kills, you need to Thank God for the rain that grows the crops that feeds all those that God’s wrath hasn’t yet consigned to a place where rain doesn’t fall. If you Thank God for anything that kills the human species, you have to Thank God for all that which doesn’t kill. But there’s no WBC placards that reads Thank God for flowers or baseball or Vietnam Veterans or holidays in Australia. Sorry WBC, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.  

To be continued…

Religious Hatred: The Westboro Baptist Church: Part One

One tends to associate religious intolerance for other religions with bloodshed. The phrase ‘holy wars’ comes to the fore. However, the peace movement has come to religious hatred as well as in all other manner of protest movements. The most famous, or infamous, of the peaceful religious haters is probably the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). I’m sure many of the recipients of their hate would prefer the days of bloodshed so they could dish a bit something back in return.

All monotheistic religions – and there are many of them – all have as a core value that theirs is the one true religion that represents the one true God and that all other monotheistic religions are false religions and represent a false version of God. That alone immediately leads me to the conclusion that they all are just full of B.S. and that there is no such animal as the one true religion and the one true God. But that’s not my overriding theme here.

Rivalry  between various monotheistic faiths have of course given rise to much inter-religious hatred and stemming from that, much violence and bloodshed. Methinks the God of the Old Testament, a serious fan of blood and gore, would be Lord Almighty pleased!

Anyway, religious hatred come violence has spanned the range from all out warfare, to terrorism, to more localized conflicts. Across the generations, so it has been and so it is now and no doubt so it will be way into the future (if humans don’t breed themselves out of existence first). A definitive list of monotheistic religious conflicts is way too extensive to give here, but Northern Ireland, the Crusades; and 9/11 all come to the mind as examples.   

At least when the holy bombs explode and the holy bullets fly and the holy swords slash away, you know what you’re up against and can strike back accordingly or as best you can.

But there’s religious hatred and violence, and then there’s religious HATRED that replaces physical violence with psychological warfare. No holy bombs, bullets or swords. Violence is replaced with the picket line, the placards, the chants, the songs. This now becomes the new (and improved?) non-violent version of bombs, bullets and swords. But make no doubt, the religious hatred, or in some cases, to make it clear, the HATRED, remains – in spades. To the best of my knowledge organized religious hatred of the peaceful kind is uniquely American. I’d like to say only in America, but I’d probably be corrected quick-smart. Still, God’s own country is awash in religious hatred without a bomb, bullet or sword anywhere in sight.

And so you can express your religious hatreds and carry out those messages and shed not one drop of actual blood and thus stay inside the law since the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech as long as such speech causes no actual or potential physical harm to others. For example there's no incitement to cause a panic, or to induce a riot or stir up the masses and cause a lynching. Still, what it lacks in doing physical damage is more than made up for in psychological trauma that these picketers direct their “God hates” placards against.  

Now what do civilized people, Americans or otherwise, make of religious picketers that carry placards that have as a central message “God hates…” and variations on the theme. Here are some actual examples of messages written on picket placards: it’s a representative, but hardly exhaustive list:

“America is Doomed; Fag Flag [the Stars & Stripes]; Fag Lover Obama; Fag Soldier in Hell; Fag Troops; Fags Are Beasts; Fags Are Violent; Fags Are Worthy of Death; Fags Die, God Laughs; Fags Doom Nations; Fear God; God Blew Up the Troops; God Hates America; God Hates Divorce; God Hates Fags; God Hates India; God Hates Jews; God Hates Obama; God Hates You; God Is Angry Everyday; God Is Your Enemy; God Killed Your Cops; God Killed Your Sons; God Sent the Shooter [various lone gunman massacres] ; God: USA’s Terrorist; Pray for More Dead Soldiers; Prepare to Meet Thy God; Remember Lot’s Wife; Thank God for 9/11; Thank God for AIDS; Thank God for Dead Cops; Thank God for Dead Soldiers; Thank God for [Hurricane] Katrina; Thank God for IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]; The Siege Is Coming; The World is Doomed; USA = Fag Nation; Your Sons Are In Hell; You’re Going to Hell”.

Then there’s a picket chant: “1, 2, 3, 4, God Hates the Marine Corps”.

And their song title: “God Hates the World”.

Pretty disgusting wouldn’t you say? Well, all those and more are brought to you, if not in person, then via your TV or Internet screen, courtesy of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), with a home base in Topeka, Kansas, which must be insulting to real Baptists since the WBC has no actual affiliation with any official Baptist organization. They’re a rouge organization, and for all practical purposes, an extended family organization. Well the BBC in a documentary on the WBC called them “The Most Hated Family in America” (2007).

Ah, but what does the WBC picket and why? Well their usual target is funerals and the higher the celebrity profiles of the funeral (victim or attendees) the better. But the funeral has got to have some sort of connection with, in their twisted logic, sins against God. So as long as the funeral has something to which, in their convoluted form of ‘sins against God’ religious logic, they can claim that “God hates” that something back in return. If “God hates” that something, and since the WBC stands shoulder-to-shoulder with God, then the WBC hates that something too and by God are they going to let the world know it!

Funerals are of course especially emotionally-charged occasions; military (killed in action) funerals all the more-so, which of course ramps up the impact the WBC will have, so military (killed in action) funerals are just about Target Number One.

The WBC also pickets other churches, since those churches, obviously, advocates a false religion or theology or god and thus are evil in the sight of the WBC God; and thus the call to arms and person the picket line. As long as something has a connection to something the WBC perceives that their God is against; then the WBC stands ready to picket! Apparently God can’t defend Himself adequately enough against false religions and needs additional moral support!

I spotted in one of their numerous extremist videos the statement that if you took on the WBC, any challenge to them at all, well God would get you for that since a slap in the face to the WBC was a slap in the face to God Almighty. Okay, I’ll take up and swallow their bait. I’m not afraid of their (non-existent) Big Bad God.

To be continued…