There appears to be a great deal of irrelevant debate over whether Bush believes God personally told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. The White House says that the claims made in an upcoming BBC documentary that Bush told the then Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, that God told him to end the tyranny in Iraq are absurd. Although the White House has been quick to deny that the reborn George ever made the statements, they haven't answered the question of whether Bush believes its true.
As frightening as the notion that Bush thinks he speaks directly to the almighty may be, I have to question whether this is really a revelation. Bush certainly has made his devotion to Christ well-known and has claimed before that his actions are based primarily on his faith. Certainly no one questions whether Bush is an ostensibly religious man, although his motives to be so are certainly debatable. I absolutely love dilemmas such as this though, because it puts moderate Christians in a very awkward position. They are forced to pretend that Bush is speaking metaphorically when he truly isn't and, in fact, often can't due to an inability to grasp the concept and because metaphors make his brain hurt.
However, is it really any more insane to believe that God would ask our current slow-witted President to invade some country than to think he debated Abraham the pros and cons of infanticide or sent an Israeli snake-oil salesman (which may or may not have been himself or his son or both - that eternally unsatisfactory Athanasian solution) to wander around Judea and Samaria with his desertbilly entourage or that he actually gives a shit whether you use his name in vain and yet neglected to explain when and what that entailed? If God was communicating through the heavens to us lowly mortals, as true Christians must certainly believe he at least a few times did, why wouldn't he talk to George W. Bush? In fact, to the world's everlasting shame and Jesus' cringing embarrassment, Bush is probably the number one pseudo-Christian in the world that God would speak to if he were so inclined to tortuous conversations, if only because Bush is currently the most powerful man on earth and what not.
In addition, it would be strangely naive to assume God, at least the version to be found in the old testament, would not counsel our mad George in support of imperialistic wars of aggression. He has always had a fondness for them in the past, as they continually help to line the pews of his congregations and of coarse make begrudging converts of anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves inside a foxhole - at least if the cliches of so many armchair warriors are to be taken as true.
But let us assume that the big G did not tell Bush to invade anyone. So what? Someone obviously did, lest it was simply an unfortunate coincidence that virtually every known neoconservative championing the Iraq invasion over the last decade somehow found foreign policy positions in this Administration. If I had to guess, I would say that someone just led Bush into an empty room in the west wing with a trail of Cocoa-puffs and that old prankster Richard Pearle, hiding in the closet, did his best "God-voice" through the White House PA system and was all like "Dubya, why don't you invade, that means attack, Iraq in March, it's the country that's just like Iran, but with more oil...ah, just ask Dick to show it to you on a map. Anyways, you should invade them in the name of peace and justice because contradiction is good politics, Saddam tried to kill your Dad and because I want you to….ooohh....ahhhh. Oh, and do this and I will forget all about that dead hooker incident." George: "you know about that?" God (winking): "Know about what George?" Bush: "Uh, that thing you just mentioned about the hooker.." God: "Yeah, no, I know, I was showing you how I forgot about...oh never mind."
Plus, even if George can hide behind the asininity of a divine mandate, what's Congress' excuse? Did the Senate and House hold a conference call with God before they all voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution? I don't particularly care who the giant asshole, metaphysical or not, telling the idiots in Washington how to most swiftly ruin the world, I just want them to stop listening. The problem is God is a notoriously unpredictable bastard and he absolutely loves fucking with people. You have to treat him like so many war-praising, jingoistic, thoughtless media pundits who love so dearly to hear their own voices in the service of faux-patriotism, you just have to tune him out.
"Then old Nobodaddy aloft
Farted and belched and coughed,
And said, "I love hanging and drawing and quartering
Every bit as well as war and slaughtering."
[William Blake]
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Monday, October 3, 2005
Here Your It Miers - Bush Nominates Crazy-Ass White Lady to Supreme Court
What the fuck is the White House up to now? Harriet "Seriously, Where the Hell Did I Come From" Miers nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States? Oliver Wendell Holmes just literally rolled over - very slowly mind you - in his separate but equal grave. As orgasmically satisfying as it is to watch conservatives throw Napoleonic tantrums all day about this nomination, I just cannot believe that the Bush administration has miscalculated their base's response so badly. Something is decidedly amiss in DC and it smells a lot like Karl Rove's creamy, hairless ass, which, incidentally, smells a lot like a rat. This absolutely has to be some kind of evil genius ploy. How else to explain such an inexplicable nomination, one that pleases neither conservatives nor liberals, nor any other pleasable or identifiable political faction for that matter - other than Harry Reid (who is acting freakishly like Miers is his grandmother) and "The Texas League of Single Old White Ladies for Essentially No Independent Political Agenda in America" of course, who are claiming this as a huge victory for "perplexing non-eventism." Hell, even moderates can't figure where the high and mighty middle ground is yet. Who is this old woman we are all asking ourselves? Other than an uncomfortable love for black eyeliner and gaudy Church attire, what are her passions?
She appears to be everything that John G. Roberts was not, unqualified, unknown and unpredictable. Roberts was an ideal pick for the White House because his legal record and resume was unassailable. He certainly had an impressive amount of trial experience with the Supreme Court, even if almost always on the wrong side, and he could reliably fall back on the "just representing my client" card for any unsavory bits of rightwing craziness he may have said in the past. Even if Roberts was presented with a memo in which he stated that black people had smaller brains than whites or that torturing gays can be good training exercises for our soldiers when not at war, he could simply deflect those political asteroids towards his then client, Ronald Reagan, where they would be immediately burned up in Reagan's flaming helio-atmospheric aura of political invincibility. Having watched most of the confirmation hearings, even I found Roberts frustratingly likeable. His mildly disturbing conservative ideology and handsy cub-scout-troop-leader creepiness was overshadowed by his ultra nice-guy reasonableness and his finely polished Harvardian uber-competence. With his round, overly-attentive, tumescent-eyed face, his mellifluous Midwesterny Christianiness, he had the look of a newborn Republican baby just squeezed out of the dusty, hateful womb of Barbara Bush to gasp in fright at the nefarious and multi-ethnic world for the very first time. Roberts face radiated a preternatural innocence like some innate Darwinistic defense mechanism to ward off the bloodthirsty fangs of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee from his exposed jugular. At one point during the hearings I am pretty sure that Chuck Schumer wanted to jump over the dais and hug the shit out of Roberts and somehow try to re-civilize him as if he were a newly found wolf-child - "Come on John, you are a smart guy, you can see how fucked up it is to force poverty-stricken women to have babies they can't raise, can't you? Johnny, admit it, NASCAR sucks doesn't it?" Most importantly though, Roberts really did know constitutional law backwards and forwards, mostly backwards, whether or not he gave a fuck about those it affected.
Miers, on the other hand, has no judicial experience to look to and so it seems very few statements to illuminate her potential judicial philosophy on the bench. Her most controversial statement to date, as if in an effort to preemptively disclaim any intelligence of her own, that she considers George W. Bush to be the most brilliant man she has ever met! Oh yes, suddenly freaked-out reader, she was talking the same George W. Bush that's currently our President. Extreme loyalty to George W. Bush is scary enough on principle, but this country is in some truly deep shit if Miers has to call Dubya at the ranch in the middle of one of his famous digging in the dirt sessions to get his thoughts on a constitutional question of law before ruling. But, I think here is where we find the real answer to this nomination. I believe this nomination is a very specific reaction to the great Sandra Day O'Connor debacle of 1981. O'Connor, a relatively conservative judicial figure nominated by Reagan, back-fired on the right because eventually she decided that her commitment to her job and her own ideology overpowered her loyalty to her benefactors. The best way to avoid a similar incident, nominate a deeply entrenched political crony who is completely unqualified for the post and, consequently, passionately devoted to you and your agenda - someone lacking any political inclinations of their own. My bet is that the young Brooks Brothers boys in the West Wing are frantically calling every wingnut in the beltway right now to assure them that Miers has explicit instructions to vote in all matters with Justice Scalia. The right already has the ideology they want on the Court, now what they need is a little lubrication. They need another yes-man, or yes-woman as it were. Clarence "Pubes" Thomas is already up there to give some desperately-needed African-American mojo to their cause, Roberts has just given them some intellectual and constitutional credibility, now Bush has added the last piece to the puzzle, some pseudo-women's-rights credibility wrapped up in a five foot two public relations package, but more importantly, a guaranteed fifth vote. They have essentially just taken the swing out of the swing vote.
The problem though is that the conservative punditry wants a controversial ideologue more than it really wants an additional vote, as that's the only way we get to the impending culture war they have been so endlessly pining for. They want to watch the left squirm a bit. Nobody likes to catch a dead fish, you want a little fight to make it worthwhile. At some point though, I think they will, reluctantly, get on the same page as the Administration on this one. They still have a long confirmation process to talk about assless-pantsed homos leering at their children and the ACLU's infamous Sunday night fetus-death cocktail parties. The Democrats best bet, of course, would be to attack Miers on her glaring lack of qualifications for the job, something difficult for the Republicans to counter since it became the keystone theme of Roberts' confirmation. However, they will be wary of doing so for fear that, if they do in fact court-block Miers, the White House will put up a much more gratuitously rightwing nominee in response. But I think they need to be careful of getting too excited about the negative response of Republicans. Although almost always true, just because Rush Limbaugh is against something doesn't make it righteous. I just can't buy the notion that George Bush is cowering to the political pressure from the left to avoid a fight. After Iraq, tax cuts, stem-cells, Plamegate, Katrina, does it seem credulous to anyone that Bush in his final term is really scared of pissing off liberals? The angle isn't completely clear here yet, but its there somewhere, hiding underneath Miers' purple, pleated Gospel gear. Maybe its nothing more complicated than Bush rewarding someone for having the gargantuan balls to call him brilliant in public.
She appears to be everything that John G. Roberts was not, unqualified, unknown and unpredictable. Roberts was an ideal pick for the White House because his legal record and resume was unassailable. He certainly had an impressive amount of trial experience with the Supreme Court, even if almost always on the wrong side, and he could reliably fall back on the "just representing my client" card for any unsavory bits of rightwing craziness he may have said in the past. Even if Roberts was presented with a memo in which he stated that black people had smaller brains than whites or that torturing gays can be good training exercises for our soldiers when not at war, he could simply deflect those political asteroids towards his then client, Ronald Reagan, where they would be immediately burned up in Reagan's flaming helio-atmospheric aura of political invincibility. Having watched most of the confirmation hearings, even I found Roberts frustratingly likeable. His mildly disturbing conservative ideology and handsy cub-scout-troop-leader creepiness was overshadowed by his ultra nice-guy reasonableness and his finely polished Harvardian uber-competence. With his round, overly-attentive, tumescent-eyed face, his mellifluous Midwesterny Christianiness, he had the look of a newborn Republican baby just squeezed out of the dusty, hateful womb of Barbara Bush to gasp in fright at the nefarious and multi-ethnic world for the very first time. Roberts face radiated a preternatural innocence like some innate Darwinistic defense mechanism to ward off the bloodthirsty fangs of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee from his exposed jugular. At one point during the hearings I am pretty sure that Chuck Schumer wanted to jump over the dais and hug the shit out of Roberts and somehow try to re-civilize him as if he were a newly found wolf-child - "Come on John, you are a smart guy, you can see how fucked up it is to force poverty-stricken women to have babies they can't raise, can't you? Johnny, admit it, NASCAR sucks doesn't it?" Most importantly though, Roberts really did know constitutional law backwards and forwards, mostly backwards, whether or not he gave a fuck about those it affected.
Miers, on the other hand, has no judicial experience to look to and so it seems very few statements to illuminate her potential judicial philosophy on the bench. Her most controversial statement to date, as if in an effort to preemptively disclaim any intelligence of her own, that she considers George W. Bush to be the most brilliant man she has ever met! Oh yes, suddenly freaked-out reader, she was talking the same George W. Bush that's currently our President. Extreme loyalty to George W. Bush is scary enough on principle, but this country is in some truly deep shit if Miers has to call Dubya at the ranch in the middle of one of his famous digging in the dirt sessions to get his thoughts on a constitutional question of law before ruling. But, I think here is where we find the real answer to this nomination. I believe this nomination is a very specific reaction to the great Sandra Day O'Connor debacle of 1981. O'Connor, a relatively conservative judicial figure nominated by Reagan, back-fired on the right because eventually she decided that her commitment to her job and her own ideology overpowered her loyalty to her benefactors. The best way to avoid a similar incident, nominate a deeply entrenched political crony who is completely unqualified for the post and, consequently, passionately devoted to you and your agenda - someone lacking any political inclinations of their own. My bet is that the young Brooks Brothers boys in the West Wing are frantically calling every wingnut in the beltway right now to assure them that Miers has explicit instructions to vote in all matters with Justice Scalia. The right already has the ideology they want on the Court, now what they need is a little lubrication. They need another yes-man, or yes-woman as it were. Clarence "Pubes" Thomas is already up there to give some desperately-needed African-American mojo to their cause, Roberts has just given them some intellectual and constitutional credibility, now Bush has added the last piece to the puzzle, some pseudo-women's-rights credibility wrapped up in a five foot two public relations package, but more importantly, a guaranteed fifth vote. They have essentially just taken the swing out of the swing vote.
The problem though is that the conservative punditry wants a controversial ideologue more than it really wants an additional vote, as that's the only way we get to the impending culture war they have been so endlessly pining for. They want to watch the left squirm a bit. Nobody likes to catch a dead fish, you want a little fight to make it worthwhile. At some point though, I think they will, reluctantly, get on the same page as the Administration on this one. They still have a long confirmation process to talk about assless-pantsed homos leering at their children and the ACLU's infamous Sunday night fetus-death cocktail parties. The Democrats best bet, of course, would be to attack Miers on her glaring lack of qualifications for the job, something difficult for the Republicans to counter since it became the keystone theme of Roberts' confirmation. However, they will be wary of doing so for fear that, if they do in fact court-block Miers, the White House will put up a much more gratuitously rightwing nominee in response. But I think they need to be careful of getting too excited about the negative response of Republicans. Although almost always true, just because Rush Limbaugh is against something doesn't make it righteous. I just can't buy the notion that George Bush is cowering to the political pressure from the left to avoid a fight. After Iraq, tax cuts, stem-cells, Plamegate, Katrina, does it seem credulous to anyone that Bush in his final term is really scared of pissing off liberals? The angle isn't completely clear here yet, but its there somewhere, hiding underneath Miers' purple, pleated Gospel gear. Maybe its nothing more complicated than Bush rewarding someone for having the gargantuan balls to call him brilliant in public.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Burn Rove, Burn
Oh, how glorious it is to watch Scott McClellan squirm under the relentless questioning of the suddenly awakened White House press corps, and to imagine even more uncomfortable anxiety going on in the seedy west-wing offices as Karl Rove shleps his soulless body around barking orders at misguided Yale grads to do something, anything, just find him a fucking terrorist attack to exploit. As if snapped out of a Katie Holmesian trance, the press corps actually seems mildly interested in a story not spoon fed to them from the Administration's all-powerful press communication machine. Maybe they felt a little well-deserved shame at the idea that one of the national press' biggest hacks in Judy Miller inadvertently becoming its biggest martyr. And now, at least until they are frightened back into their proper place, we get to watch Scottie and George W. tell us they simply will not comment on an ongoing investigation - after happily commenting several times during the last year on it - in their usual ironicless tone.
We should enjoy the show now while it lasts, because it will be fleeting. If the last five years has taught us anything it should be that Karl Rove and the administration will weather this storm and emerge virtually unscathed. Hell, they will probably use this scandal as a pretext to invade Syria or to elect Jeb Bush President or to somehow have a law passed that forbids blacks from serving in Congress. The point is, it's not wise to start underestimating Karl. Listen, any person with even the slightest amount of political savvy knew that Rove was involved in the Plame leak the moment it happened, so this is really no great revelation. It was an obvious political move on the part of the White House (as convincing the American people that war is necessary always is), and Karl Rove is the political wing of the White House. I simply cannot imagine that Rove tolerates leaks of that caliber to happen without his express consent. Hell, Rove keeps his hand so deep up each of his puppet's asses, he doesn't even let his prize moron go to a debate without being wired up.
But for now at least, we get to be delighted by the tortured defenses of Karl from the rightwing pundits. John Gibson, a Foxnewswhore with a curiously familiar shtick, thinks that Rove should get a medal for the leak rather than potentially go to jail (let us put aside the matter of why John Gibson's medal-awarding threshold is so low - he probably thinks I deserve the congressional medal of honor for telling this homeless guy on the bus this morning all about Valerie Plame). The editorial boys at the Wall Street Journal tend to agree, as they applaud Rove for simply telling America the truth about Wilson - because lord knows we all gave a flying fuck whether his wife suggested he go the Niger or not. I know I did, under the arbitrary notion that you can't trust what anyone whose wife attempts to get them a job. Why are we to be incredulous of what Joe Wilson has to say about Iraqis purchasing yellow-cake because his wife suggested the CIA send him (she doesn't run the fucking place, someone else there must have agreed that it was OK as well)? First of all, its more than just a little bit suspect when the Administration claims concern over Valerie Plame's role in Wilson's assignment - Do they actually expect us to believe that they are strong opponents of nepotism? If they believed that, George W. Bush would still be lying in a pool of his own vomit in a downtown Houston motel after a long-night of jenga and hooker sex.
Apparently, Rove, a well-known defender of truth and justice in America, was simply correcting a dangerous misapprehension by leaking the information. It's a shame he didn't take credit for his altruistic deeds earlier than now, when Scott McClellan was saying how ridiculous it is to suggest he had anything to do with it. If only they could of anticipated the right wing's current spin job, they could of really set it up this heroic whistleblower bullshit better. The point they are all so purposely missing though is that is doesn't make the slightest difference whether Rove was leaking the information for sheer revenge or to protect America from the lying scourge that is Joe Wilson. If he outed a CIA operative intentionally, it was illegal and he continues to be the monstrous asshole we always knew he was. The preferred tactic now is to argue about whether Joe Wilson did in fact understate his wife's role in him being sent to Niger and whether he was anti-war. Crazy-ass John Gibson even referred to him as a peacenik (despite his support for the first Gulf War, his support of several republican causes and his wife's role as an undercover CIA operative) as if that matters in the slightest bit. Only in America can a begiantspectacled albino loudmouth newsgeek like John Gibson (see below) use the word "cojones" on national television with complete sincerity and call a guy like Joe Wilson a peacenik without getting the shit kicked out of him in the Fox news parking lot.
Yes, this guy:
Based on historical precedent, the best way for Karl to get out of the current morass is to remind the American people how fucked up the right wing is on some other hot button issue, like appointing Supreme court judges, and we will forget all about this Plame nonsense. Scottie will tell everyone that George wants a brilliant, tough strict-constructionist who will not legislate from the bench, will then appoint a right-wing lunatic that likes to wipe his/her ass with the Bill of Rights and the media, as predicted, will grab firmly a hold of the next rope and let go of this one. Or Karl could just get Robert Novak to kidnap some white girl and we will all forget how to spell CIA.
We should enjoy the show now while it lasts, because it will be fleeting. If the last five years has taught us anything it should be that Karl Rove and the administration will weather this storm and emerge virtually unscathed. Hell, they will probably use this scandal as a pretext to invade Syria or to elect Jeb Bush President or to somehow have a law passed that forbids blacks from serving in Congress. The point is, it's not wise to start underestimating Karl. Listen, any person with even the slightest amount of political savvy knew that Rove was involved in the Plame leak the moment it happened, so this is really no great revelation. It was an obvious political move on the part of the White House (as convincing the American people that war is necessary always is), and Karl Rove is the political wing of the White House. I simply cannot imagine that Rove tolerates leaks of that caliber to happen without his express consent. Hell, Rove keeps his hand so deep up each of his puppet's asses, he doesn't even let his prize moron go to a debate without being wired up.
But for now at least, we get to be delighted by the tortured defenses of Karl from the rightwing pundits. John Gibson, a Foxnewswhore with a curiously familiar shtick, thinks that Rove should get a medal for the leak rather than potentially go to jail (let us put aside the matter of why John Gibson's medal-awarding threshold is so low - he probably thinks I deserve the congressional medal of honor for telling this homeless guy on the bus this morning all about Valerie Plame). The editorial boys at the Wall Street Journal tend to agree, as they applaud Rove for simply telling America the truth about Wilson - because lord knows we all gave a flying fuck whether his wife suggested he go the Niger or not. I know I did, under the arbitrary notion that you can't trust what anyone whose wife attempts to get them a job. Why are we to be incredulous of what Joe Wilson has to say about Iraqis purchasing yellow-cake because his wife suggested the CIA send him (she doesn't run the fucking place, someone else there must have agreed that it was OK as well)? First of all, its more than just a little bit suspect when the Administration claims concern over Valerie Plame's role in Wilson's assignment - Do they actually expect us to believe that they are strong opponents of nepotism? If they believed that, George W. Bush would still be lying in a pool of his own vomit in a downtown Houston motel after a long-night of jenga and hooker sex.
Apparently, Rove, a well-known defender of truth and justice in America, was simply correcting a dangerous misapprehension by leaking the information. It's a shame he didn't take credit for his altruistic deeds earlier than now, when Scott McClellan was saying how ridiculous it is to suggest he had anything to do with it. If only they could of anticipated the right wing's current spin job, they could of really set it up this heroic whistleblower bullshit better. The point they are all so purposely missing though is that is doesn't make the slightest difference whether Rove was leaking the information for sheer revenge or to protect America from the lying scourge that is Joe Wilson. If he outed a CIA operative intentionally, it was illegal and he continues to be the monstrous asshole we always knew he was. The preferred tactic now is to argue about whether Joe Wilson did in fact understate his wife's role in him being sent to Niger and whether he was anti-war. Crazy-ass John Gibson even referred to him as a peacenik (despite his support for the first Gulf War, his support of several republican causes and his wife's role as an undercover CIA operative) as if that matters in the slightest bit. Only in America can a begiantspectacled albino loudmouth newsgeek like John Gibson (see below) use the word "cojones" on national television with complete sincerity and call a guy like Joe Wilson a peacenik without getting the shit kicked out of him in the Fox news parking lot.
Yes, this guy:
Based on historical precedent, the best way for Karl to get out of the current morass is to remind the American people how fucked up the right wing is on some other hot button issue, like appointing Supreme court judges, and we will forget all about this Plame nonsense. Scottie will tell everyone that George wants a brilliant, tough strict-constructionist who will not legislate from the bench, will then appoint a right-wing lunatic that likes to wipe his/her ass with the Bill of Rights and the media, as predicted, will grab firmly a hold of the next rope and let go of this one. Or Karl could just get Robert Novak to kidnap some white girl and we will all forget how to spell CIA.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
New Pope, Same Old Pap-acy
White smoke billows towards the sky over St. Peter's Basilica, but no my now-giddy reader it's not because the millions of Catholics throughout the world gathered in the square, came to their collective senses and decided to get ass-drunk on the blood of Jesus and reject the lunacy that is Catholicism by reducing its seat of power into a giant bonfire. No such luck I am afraid. Instead, the greatest cult left on the face of the earth has appointed itself a new leader. "Oh, how wonderful, maybe the Church will adapt to more modern realities under new leadership" you naively query having not caught any legitimate news on the subject and relying entirely on my insight for reference. Wrong again fair reader. Just a couple of weeks after his procrastinated death, Pope John Paul II, a relative moderate, has been replaced by Pope Benedict XVI, a conservative fanatic, as the official leader of the Church of Organized Regressive Thought.
In truth, this should come as no surprise to my educated readership of one. Fanaticism is cyclical and perpetuated by conflict and strife. With the world teetering so tenuously on the brink of international chaos, this is exactly what we should have expected. I can just imagine the internal politicking going on in the Sacred College of the Cardinals of the Sacred Sanctity of Religious Freaks deciding that if the world is in fact aiming to destroy itself, the Vatican better well have a loud-ass dog in the fight. No one wants to be a spectator in a potentially civilization-ending Kulturkampf. And who better than the "Pitbull" or the "Enforcer" or the "Douchebag" or whatever the fuck he is genially referred to as when he condemns entire societies to burn in the fiery pits of hell. Only in a world this cynically anachronistic can our most visible theocratic organization appoint an orthodox clergyman nicknamed the "Enforcer" to lead a Church based primarily on the teachings of a pacifist and progressive without the slightest hint of irony. I'm am not saying that there is no room on this big planet for wishful-thinking, utopist hippies of questionable hygiene (Christ), or that there is no room for staunch, angry, former Hitler-youth fanatics (Ratzinger), there is plenty of room for both. I am just saying I would like it better if the latter couldn't co-opt the former while erasing any trace of his actual ideology.
I admit Pope John Paul II was no saint, but at least in the later years he was tempered by a healthy dose of oldman cluelessness. So, we could attribute uncomfortable truths such as John Paul's dislike for homosexuals to harmless, curmudgeon kookiness. But Ratzinger, with his black, bottomless ocular cavities, his grouted-on scowl, his raw Germanic aura of disgust for all things unCatholic, his shameless track record of separatism and hatred, we simply cannot tolerate. I mean did I miss something? When did it become acceptable to be a rightwing German again? The Catholic church has long been remarkable in its disconnect from rational thought - such as the decision that millions of innocent Africans are better off dead than with Satanic pieces of plastic touching their engorged genitals - and Ratzinger is simply another example of this.
My hope is that Ratzinger can do for organized religion what George W. Bush is so successfully doing for the republican party, illuminating the creepy fundamentalism inherent in it for those who somehow have managed not to notice. I await with great excitement for Pope Benny's first couple of speeches after inauguration to hear his ideas on the moral relativism of interracial dating, the need for increased security precautions like frisking and body cavity searches against potential terrorist alter boys and the hidden Marxist dangers of Buddhism. It should be quite a pope show.
In truth, this should come as no surprise to my educated readership of one. Fanaticism is cyclical and perpetuated by conflict and strife. With the world teetering so tenuously on the brink of international chaos, this is exactly what we should have expected. I can just imagine the internal politicking going on in the Sacred College of the Cardinals of the Sacred Sanctity of Religious Freaks deciding that if the world is in fact aiming to destroy itself, the Vatican better well have a loud-ass dog in the fight. No one wants to be a spectator in a potentially civilization-ending Kulturkampf. And who better than the "Pitbull" or the "Enforcer" or the "Douchebag" or whatever the fuck he is genially referred to as when he condemns entire societies to burn in the fiery pits of hell. Only in a world this cynically anachronistic can our most visible theocratic organization appoint an orthodox clergyman nicknamed the "Enforcer" to lead a Church based primarily on the teachings of a pacifist and progressive without the slightest hint of irony. I'm am not saying that there is no room on this big planet for wishful-thinking, utopist hippies of questionable hygiene (Christ), or that there is no room for staunch, angry, former Hitler-youth fanatics (Ratzinger), there is plenty of room for both. I am just saying I would like it better if the latter couldn't co-opt the former while erasing any trace of his actual ideology.
I admit Pope John Paul II was no saint, but at least in the later years he was tempered by a healthy dose of oldman cluelessness. So, we could attribute uncomfortable truths such as John Paul's dislike for homosexuals to harmless, curmudgeon kookiness. But Ratzinger, with his black, bottomless ocular cavities, his grouted-on scowl, his raw Germanic aura of disgust for all things unCatholic, his shameless track record of separatism and hatred, we simply cannot tolerate. I mean did I miss something? When did it become acceptable to be a rightwing German again? The Catholic church has long been remarkable in its disconnect from rational thought - such as the decision that millions of innocent Africans are better off dead than with Satanic pieces of plastic touching their engorged genitals - and Ratzinger is simply another example of this.
My hope is that Ratzinger can do for organized religion what George W. Bush is so successfully doing for the republican party, illuminating the creepy fundamentalism inherent in it for those who somehow have managed not to notice. I await with great excitement for Pope Benny's first couple of speeches after inauguration to hear his ideas on the moral relativism of interracial dating, the need for increased security precautions like frisking and body cavity searches against potential terrorist alter boys and the hidden Marxist dangers of Buddhism. It should be quite a pope show.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
The Trials of the Stache
There are moments, rare though they may be, when you have to be at least reluctantly impressed by this administration's giant metaphorical testicles. John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations? What the fuck, was Michael Savage busy? What about Oliver North, I hear he is looking for a decent nine-to-five gig between playing night-vision-goggled grab-ass with America's heroes overseas? Maybe I am being a little nitpicky here, but doesn't hating the underlying principle of an organization preclude you from working there? Obviously not. It's almost as if, and here is where you have to be slightly impressed, the administration tried to locate the person least appropriate on earth for the job and appointed him. I thought Negroponte was some kind of a bad joke, but now they're just fucking with us. Other than out of hypnotic deference to Bolton's mysterious and monstrous mustache, why would anyone within the international political community take him even slightly seriously? It's not that his ideological positions are remarkable for a Washington hack; it's just that they might be less appropriate in those great sissified halls of the pinko U.N. Some there might disagree a bit with some of Bolton's main arguments - i.e. that international law is for homos, that the Security Council should be four countries lighter, that all of the African countries' seats should be moved to the back row of the general assembly and that the 10 floors housing the ambassadors of the non-Israeli Middle East countries be vaporized to bring freedom to future generations of Arab ambassadors (I know, I am not sure exactly how it works either). What progress can we expect from a man that has to build relationships with those he clearly despises? I presume that is the very point - to make the U.N. the gridlocked, ineffective organization that Bolton has long claimed it to be. Can this administration do more to show how little it gives a shit about the U.N. First they bug your offices, then they send Colin Powell with some shitty pictures of mobile homes, childishly forged documents and a healthy lack of ethics to lie to your over-diversified faces and, as if that wasn't enough, they appoint the loudest, most ludicrously-mustached, critic of the fundamental premise of international multilateralism as the host ambassador. Baseod on this strategy, I shall be waiting with baited-breadth for a call from the Vatican to be the next Pope.
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