Religion's Broken Axle

The Religionist Dream

When MeanMesa uses the term, "religionist," the intention is that it be all inclusive, that is, that it comfortably include all religions.  The "religionist" forsakes a more organic application of human problem solving capacities for an alternative application of mythological concepts while validating such an unlikely effort with precepts of that mythology.  Naturally, when this approach is taken, the application of mythological interpretations to "what's left" of normal reality leads to all sorts of troublesome, paradoxical contradictions.

"What's left" of normal reality?

Having evolved on this world, humans have been "blessed" with a more or less sufficient, "on board" consciousness system which innately promises them a credible prospect for responding to reality.  When humans are confronted with the myriad challenges of life encountered here, their instinctive impulse is to solve such problems, mitigate such disadvantages or make some other necessary redirection in their values so their lives might continue more or less comfortably and casually.

The mythological influence persuades humans to act quite antagonistically to this more normal and more organic way.  The furtive mythological arguments fly through their otherwise fairly rational behavior providing two notable disadvantages. 

First, these challenges, viewed through the very suspicious lens of the mythology, become re-framed into mythological "tests" which leave the "real world" challenges neither comprehended nor met.  Second, what passes as the solutions to these chronically misperceived challenges are not constructed of actual possibilities, but instead, they are fabricated from mythological precepts.

All this would be little more than a stuffy and academic tirade if it could be believably relegated to the status of a mere lecture in a philosophy seminar.  However, it can't.  As this day dawns, we find ourselves "dragged along" with this absurdity.  Willing or not, convinced or not, the application of these religionist "solutions to what ails us" is being eagerly imposed by force.

The process has insinuated itself into our unexamined presumptions about the necessities of our own governance.

This post is not another historical litany of religionist atrocities.  There are already plenty of libraries bulging with such breathless laments.  This post is about the summer of 2012.

A Pretend Bible and a Purloined Constitution

Further, just as this is not the litany of atrocities mentioned above, it is also not the desolate sigh which ushers in the latest revelation of hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy doesn't bother the contemporary religionist because he is illiterate, and it doesn't evoke the hopeless resignation of MeanMesa, either.  How could it?  

If there ever were an esoteric "anchor" for all this mischief, all curiosity is now just as odorous as the vomit of a religionist sot inebriated by the momentary narcotic of overly easy, synthetic piety.

When fairy tales have been sequentially interpreted one thousand times already, who will sacrifice an ounce of serenity when the interpretations -- much less the actions based on them -- fail in consistency?  Perhaps the Wizard of Oz was bald!  Material relevance in the contemporary "hay fest" has grown as fetid as week old communion wine.

However, now we find unwritten, imaginary scripture from an impossible mythology frenetically exhorted by the otherwise uninterested and violently imposed by the instantly willing.  All enforced by a dull -- very dull -- bloody sword of half baked theocracy.  The theocracy being imposed on the Republic has no basis beyond a naked avarice for power.

Illegitimate Religion

How can an institutional franchise become illegitimate?  Hypocrisy and illiteracy perform no service to it, but these "feet of clay" alone cannot soil one specific, deflective apostasy any more than the previous or the subsequent.  Although the idea does not originate with MeanMesa, it can be stated here.

The illegitimacy of religion is revealed by the ambitions, causes and machinations of its proliferation.  If there is legitimacy, it will be seen in the process through which a proselyte hypnotically purges the sense of a lifetime to embrace the impossible.  It is not seen as the product of offering refuge, promising ultimate divine retribution to enemies, the desperate gratitude of proffered food or the empty promise of paradise.

Is there a means to adopt religionist mythology which might color the process as legitimate?  Not really.  Religions in which -- by "holy precept" -- the "faithful" must grow in number are already damned to an inevitable "Earthiness" before the first pew is filled.

The Modern "Holy Bizarre"

A realistic appraisal of religionist saturation into the "hearts and minds" of Americans reveals three, unmistakable "ideative demographics."

The first group is so infatuated with the "specifics" of the religionists' mythological promises that they think of them constantly.   Naturally, a rational attempt to apply such ideas to modern life results in a disturbing frustration.  All the promises infatuate the undeveloped humans, but immediately, the uncertainties which are a necessary part of the franchise follow the blissful hypnosis with a crushing chaos.

The second group maintains the "specifics" of the first absent the glacial torrent of arguments.  Commonly, these identify themselves as "believers" not as "obedient followers."  They revel in differentiating their loosely flowing  background axiomatics from the rigid discipline imposed on the first group.  This second group is attracted to the "feel good" parts while actively denying the troubling remnants of ancient tribal patriarchy and divine judgment.

The third group considers the first two groups to be an unavoidable social anomaly, one which is best left unperturbed in actions or words.  To this third group, encounters with both the "specific" and "non-specific" religionist amounts to the equivalent of being handed a new baby with a full diaper.  They will nod and gracefully accede to the grotesque infant's intelligence, health and good behavior, then return the mess to its mother's arms as quickly as possible.

The first group probably represents around 20% of the active electorate.  The second is much larger, perhaps 40% or 50%.  The third group would represent the remainder, maybe 30% or so.

However, 60% or 70% of the electorate which can potentially be influenced by religionist innuendo or, even more energetically, be occasionally swayed by outright schemes to enforce ideas presented as consistent with ancient tribal law, represent too rich a prize to be tastefully "left alone" by political opportunists.

Of course, the political opportunists most interested in exploiting such a "wind fall" are precisely those with the least appetite for "trumpeting about their record."  For manipulating both the obsessed and the barely caring, the biblical political opportunities are "low hanging fruit."

Forget fifty centuries of screamingly obvious, craven religionist machinations, the "old rugged cross" is effortlessly called back into service.  The precisely repeated, sanguine terror -- the "service" -- it will dutifully provide has not changed an iota since the spring slave burnings in Ur in the annual Sumerian tribute to Enlil.

The "biblical targets" Call To the Righteous

Here, MeanMesa can easily provide a comprehensive list of "biblical" imperatives being forcibly breathed into legal existence as precepts consistent with the tattered old fairy tale -- whether or not, of course, they were ever a part of it.  Yes, gifted with a slightly higher illiteracy than the rest of the country, the Southerners are leading the pack in this head long plunge back to the Dark Ages, but plenty of "public school products" roaming the territory beyond the Mason Dixon Line are also desperately eager, slathering volunteers.

Forget the details, they are "knocking on heaven's door."

Which political favorites have been insinuated into biblical legitimacy?

The prohibition of caring for the sick.

The infatuation with war mongering.

The codified neglect of the poor.

The validity of unequal wealth.

The  dispatching of responsibility for the planet.

The denial of rights to marry for minorities.

The demonization of women seeking abortion.

In each case, the admonition is either contradictory to the biblical source of the religion, antithetical to common teaching or not so much as mentioned at all.  The "sins" which have become so popular have everything to do with the psychology of the bankrupt.  These would never have "seen the light of day" if the Neanderthal impulse of the religionist could not have been incited to vote politically based on them.

Yes, it is grotesque, but the consideration of the absurd in this case remains toothlessly impotent under the threat of castigation for real or imagined transgressions against the religionist franchises.  No one is willing to discuss specific instances for fear of insane reactions from those with the greatest -- worldly -- interests in sustaining the spell.

When the vagaries and details of the piously adopted, fabricated "divisions" between vast, unsubstantiated "articles of faith" which are the lines of demarcation between various flags each franchise proudly bears are added to the chaos already firmly at hand, both unanticipated blood letting and astonishing complicity emerge.

MeanMesa abhors the necessity of protecting fellow citizens from the claws of this church or that one.  The medieval "terror of purity" is now attacking the vaginas of unarmed, powerless women and the choice of partners for homosexuals with no capacity to resist.  Unthinkable coalitions, bizarre in ways which defile history, are casually formed for political ends.

Pentacostal purists embrace an "anti-christ" Mormon amid the frenzy of realizing racist bigotry which can hide under no other name.  The shock troops for this unlikely amalgam are frenzied Catholics selling evangelical fear as they storm across Republican strongholds like hordes of locusts, persecuting women in a style more popular seven centuries ago.

Quiet horror without design.  Khaled's Cellars.  (painting source)

Still, amid the wreckage, they are taken seriously.

The “Co-Op” Will Save the Day!

“It's like a condom with a hole. It looks like protection.” Stephannie Miller (Albuquerque, KABQ 1350AM, 18 August 2009) 110

The Republicans and the Democratic Senators of the “wholly owned” variety dismissed the possibility of a single payer approach to the health care reform matter at the first light of the first day of debate. The total resistance was presented in a chilling certainty: “We will never vote for a health reform package which includes the single payer option.” Period.

The obvious implication of such a well ordered affront to what the American people had indicated as their first choice was, well, negotiate.

Once those negotiations were in progress, the dramatics were introduced on all fronts. Senator Grassley's (R-Ohio) “unplug Grandma” was perhaps the first of many carefully tuned “word salads” to gain traction under media enhancement. “Federal take-over of health care” placing a bureaucrat “between you and your doctor” quickly followed.

The hill billies and bigots, that is, the base of the Rush Limbaugh Party, found “secret” diamonds in their salads. No thought was required for these reactionaries to literally explode with “free market” outrage, whatever that meant. Dick Armey, a very soiled Senator for the racist past, had been languishing in the rest fields of forgotten bigots for too long. In no time he found himself at the helm of an incredibly well funded “organizing committee” with the stated task of keeping the hill billies and bigots in a frenzy of manageable outrage. There would be the harsh doggerel of the hand made signs, the “Obama is Hitler” and the unchallenged appearance of gun toting “freedom thinkers” on the fringes of Presidential town hall meetings almost at once.

You see, the hill billies and bigots among us had taken quite an affront at the ease of the Obama camp during the Presidential campaign in 2008. It was a predictable response to being excluded from a sophisticated, sincere populous of Obama supporters. The “Yes We Can” crowd was having discussions about ideas which might map a possible emergence from the destruction of the Bush autocracy. The hill billies and bigots were left by themselves, stranded with their vacuous insistence that “there were two sides to the argument.”

You betch'a. Precisely as there are two sides to a plan to bail out a life boat after a ship wreck.

In fact, once the “bail out” plan was executed at a significant cost of Obama's political capital, the hill billies and bigots continued to fervently criticize it. Unable to comprehend the gravity of the situation of the “life boat” or the “bail out,” the hill billies and bigots insisted on pretending that the calamity was no more than politics, you know, a simple matter of which side will prevail. The matter of the sunken ship and the life boat tossing about on the stormy ocean of a very perturbed world meant nothing more than an opportunity to them. The “lesser people” could be inducted to the pedestrian tasks of laboring to save the country while the hill billies and bigots remained unburdened with any of such menial chores, free to savage new opportunities.

The outcome? More negotiating, only, this time, the “public option” was to be removed from the table as a condition of talks. Anything less would be tantamount to an imposition of appeasement. The billionaire insurance masters were emboldened. They issued this “combat order” to their servants in the Senate, and those toadies obeyed, promising to employ every Senatorial “trick” that they had learned after spending all those years in Washington.

Time for more moments with Grassley. His orders included proposing the “health care Co-Op” idea. He very dutifully trotted out his long, warm hearth tale of Co-Operative development in his heartland agricultural state. The trustworthiness of Co-Ops arising from the fact that they were non-profit entities managed by members – innocent consumers of the Co-Op's wares honest, hard working, dedicated to the good of the membership and elected rather than appointed in the thrall of glory oozing out of a Board of Directors who would sell Mother Mary's after birth if given a chance.

Grassley's exposition might have material, factual merit when applied to agricultural co-operatives. Those groups were forced to rise up in their own defense from market manipulators with very starkly “free market” ambitions of controlling agricultural markets to the detriment of farmers. When those farmers saw these economic parasites routinely bankrupting them, purchasing their farm lands for pennies on a dollar and then amalgamating their advances into gigantic agricultural conglomerates such as ADM and Monsanto, they formed co-operatives as a form of self-defense. The continuing threat continually posed by the Juggernauts of those “farm gobbling” monsters has sustained the enthusiasm for such co-operatives even today.

A perfect, prepackaged ruse for the Grassley. What could be more attractive to a population of wounded, health care greed victims than such a story of “good old American know-how” and “stick-to-it-ism.” The plan would include very little government intervention and, yet, would still be a “free range” of health care insurance providers beyond the death grip of the insurance corporations.

The media was ordered to portray the plan as a literal, modern, economic “wet dream.”

It did. In no time, the “co-operative health care” solution was ascending with no less glory than the bright warm, dawn sun of a beautiful new day.

However, as usual with media portrayals, some rather pertinent details were carefully omitted from that gushing media presentation. Those details would be any mention of an example of the recently ennobled phenomena of “co-operative health care.” After all, weren't there contemporary examples of such a fabulous solution to the dilemma?

Uh, not exactly. You see, there is actually a contemporary example of the perpetual blessings of a “co-operative health care wet dream,” and it is close at hand. Blue Cross and Blue Shield began their corporate lives as a co-operative health plan. Along the way, this co-operative of health care consuming members “drank the Kool Aid,” turning into one of the current mega-corporations practicing every one of the profit extracting outrages typical to the industry giants. It now splays itself in a myriad forms, tax exempt, “non-profit,” legally monopolistic (thanks to the good work of its carefully purchased Senators and Congressmen), all deceptive, grotesque (and profitable) denizens of the “big take,” quite able to defend themselves by embarking on “lie campaigns” and freely furnished, misleading television propaganda.

An exaggeration? Media Matters produced an insightful “Fact Check” on a typical Blue Cross Blue Shield operation in North Carolina. ( http://mediamattersaction.org/factcheck/200905190001 ) There, in that hill billy paradise of illiteracy and corruption well populated with Republican Neo-Con miscreants and other bigots with ambitions of destroying the President because he is black, every nasty aspect of the stinking game emerges into daylight.

It turns out not to matter so much. The Republicans and their Blue Dog (lap dog) Democrats have already said they will never vote for a Co-Op health care plan either.