October 21. 2001

This isn't a holy war?

October 21, 2001

Power Rangers unite! Today, as George "Dubya" Bush tours the world and ends up shmoozing with many that harbour "different" views toward human rights than we in the West do, we still are bombarded with official press statements:

THIS ISN'T A HOLY WAR...

The "war" against terror hasn't been the kind of exciting war that America has grown used to, courtesy of a steady diet of Hollywood. There isn't much to report, so the media must be pretty thankful that some clown(s) decided to mail a bunch of anthrax around.

Fuck you, Anthrax! Not only has this spurred paranoia among everyday Americans, it has also:

gained a lot of media exposure for the United States Postal Service
gained a lot of media exposure for the band Anthrax
proved what David Letterman has known for years - FOX isn't a real network (anthrax letters were mailed to CBS, ABC, and NBC)
given CNN something to talk about

The anthrax incidents and the terrorism may or may not be related in actuality, but they sure are in the minds of everyone in the Western world.

The "war" in Afghanistan continues, and between the yammerings about anthrax, the news-starved public is thirsty for any sort of news they can find out. The "war" against "terrorism" blurs even more, and becomes the "war" against the Taliban.

Not that the Taliban don't sound like a bunch of assholes worthy of bombing the fuck out of - they banned TV, after all, so they must be mean, right? They banned a lot of things - things that don't fit the mould of what a Fundamentalist Muslim ought to do or be partaking in. We, in the West, aren't used to such concepts as Fundamentalism. We think that kind of "stuff" is evil, sexist, and racially intolerant.

The notion of someone flying a plane into a skyscraper "in the name of Allah" or any God seems so far-flung that most of us scoff at any affiliation with something as peace-oriented as "religion".

However, we in the West, for the most part, have done ourselves a favour and watered down our religions of choice, just so none of us come across as nasty as the Taliban. Okay, so maybe the Westboro Baptist Church and the whole Jehovah's Witness movement seem a little fucked up, but the rest of us are okay, right?

We've watered down our religions to a safe ratio that even in the rare occurrence of church and state mixing, the damage will be minimal.

Okay, so we have a few religions that wrote their own books, or chose to believe everything in that black one that was written by a bunch of men, a long time ago, when sexism was a little more okay than it is now...

There are those crazy folks that blow up abortion clinics because their God told them to
Hardline Jehovah's don't approve of transfusions, since it was condemned by God many years before the concept was even fathomed, but "new and improved" watered-down Jehovah's are starting to rethink their stand on the issue
Fred Pehlps and company picket the funerals of homosexuals who die from AIDS

Looks like a few people forgot to water down their religions!!!

This could lead to trouble. Let's hope that the United States doesn't run out of evil, bearded people to take out their aggression on, or these hardline religious folk just might be next. After all, they have no shame...even Corporate America, considered the scum of the land by many, showed some decency and knew that advertising was inappropriate in these hard times, yet Mormons and Free Methodists were on CNN hawking their God(s) to a vulnerable public.

After that, who's to say who's next - the flight schools that trained the fuckwads who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? The creators of Sesame Street (we have all seen Bert's affiliation)? The United States Postal Service (for providing mailboxes)?

Let's bomb them all, because not only does God hate fags, He hates America too!