A Teletubby Cabal

In America, at least, I do not think the powerful and wealthy elite—the leaders, the politicians (democrat or republican), the CEOs, the media, et al—are out to defraud, dispossess, and delete the proletariat and the righteous. I just don’t think there’s some kind of scarlet-robed and hooded cabal that meets in candlelit Gothic catacombs to plot our ruin—although I’ll have to admit it does play well like a Dan Brown novel (You’ll understand if I don’t say a “good” Dan Brown novel). I remember how fun it was to get all shivery when I heard scary urban legends in the dark, and I swear I too saw the “thing” flit by the window in the old boarded up house over on Willow Street, although now when I think about it, I suspect it must have been headlights playing across a darkened window. 

Many people, of course, never quite grow up or they are just really, really bored or more likely a little of both. Of course the whole good and evil dichotomy plays perfectly into the hands of the Christian Right, The Moral Majority, The Tea Party—Oh hell, pretty much the whole Conservative base—because it mirrors the Bible story in so many mythical, mystical, hysterical, and ridiculous ways. If you can believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old (How do dinosaurs figure in?), the big bearded guy on the Sistine Chapel ceiling fashioned us all from a deluxe set of Play-Doh, some old guy selected two of all the animals (That would almost certainly have to include insects, microorganisms that are not water borne, and birds that could not stay aloft for 150 days) and loaded them onto a boat that couldn’t possibly accommodate all of them, and another old guy parted a sea with a wave of his staff (If he could do that, then why couldn’t that old Hebrew sailor do it, too), then it’s a short hop indeed to believe wholesale that guns, the death penalty, war, inequality/discrimination (of anyone who you are not), creationism, and sexual abstinence are righteous ideas--for everyone. However, I am almost certain that those who believe that the anti-Christ (Which Teletubby is it this week?) and a plethora of perceived evil factions—Democrats, Muslims/Palestinians, LGBTQ, Pro Choice Advocates, Evolutionists, Environmentalists, et al—are out to get them are in no wise interested in the welfare of, to them, a populace-apparition (See Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”), an abstraction, outside a small congregation of like-minded and immediate family and friends, nor do they wake up every morning agonizing over thoughts about the demise of a grand idea of America (that star-spangled blazing victory thingy in the national anthem), or thoughts about the 25,000 children who will die from starvation before sundown, or about rising sea-levels and receding ice and the wholesale destruction of 6,000 square miles of rain forests—the lungs of the globe—annually. No, actually, the Moral Majority wake up every morning mother f---ing all the “liberal commie leftist” who do because the Far Right is generally afraid they’re just not going to get enough (Isn't their chief gripe always about taxes?) although their loudest mouths—Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Santorum, O’Reilly, Bachman— seem to have more than enough.

 

If Conservatives cared at all about America, they’d all be on PTA, attend parent/teacher conferences and all civic forums, and question why America lags behind the civilized world in education, and if they cared at all about the globe and its inhabitants—their god’s sacrosanct creation—they’d send food rather than prayers to the starving masses (not tithes to the likes of Jimmy Swaggart to spend on whores) and quit relegating the destruction of the globe and its resources to that anybody’s guess “God works in mysterious ways” crap but rather to stupid people who work in really stupid ways (and using the U. of East Anglia debacle as proof against global warming is like saying all Christians are like Jimmy Swaggart). Inequality, urban decay, poor education, starvation, crime, and a dying planet are not abstractions. They’re tangible problems that have real solutions that you won’t find on Fox and Friends. All you’ll find there is fear in a glitzy PTL (à la Jimmy and Tammy Fay) package.

 

Come on, though, isn’t it really just that big American political “refrigerator” bluff and bluster when kith and kin are over after church for burgers and booze before the big game? I’ve knelt at that barbecue, too, but for some reason once it got quiet and I was left with “my own” thoughts, I felt fraudulent and ever the fool, even evil. So I left (double entendre intended).