Sunday, May 22, 2011

Yup, Still Here

Good read in the non-aftermath of the fundieocalypse by William Rivers Pitt.

...ol' Harold had consulted his trusty Bible, done some wildly questionable math, and pulled the exact moment of the End Times out of his cash-filled hat.

Mr. Pitt is too kind. Or works for a more politically correct outfit than around here. I suspect that old fraud pulled it outta someplace darker and smellier than his hat.

Oh yeah, the money has by-God been rolling in ever since Mr. Camping sprayed his end-times predictions into a Family Radio microphone. But I'm quite sure that has nothing to do with anything. Those billboards were not an investment seeking future profits, and the incredible sum of money Mr. Camping has raked in as The Day loomed closer was just simple people trying to get in good with God before the elevator took them to the top floor.

Somewhere, P.T. Barnum is slapping his knee and giggling like a titmouse.

Forgive this leap to judgment, but I have a sneaking suspicion I know just exactly what type of person goes in for this breed of apocalyptic nonsense. Let me guess: you're a Christian of the evangelical stripe, white, and your ears are forever attuned to the dog-whistles of social conservativism. You voted for George W. Bush twice, and would have happily done it a third time if given the chance. It's almost certain your whole life is caving in around your ears, and you are utterly unable to cope. You can't make the mortgage payments, your job got outsourced to somewhere, and you seethe at the presence of non-English-speaking brown people around you, even when they mow your lawn and empty your trash and serve your food. You think Rush and Beck sit at the right hand of God, and you've been voting Republican ever since Ronald Reagan invited Jerry Falwell to the White House. You are a follower, an adorer of authority in all its permutations. You smell like fear.

Your life is caving in around your ears, to an incredibly large degree, because you have supported - with your time, your money, and your badly-spelled signs at Tea Party rallies - the very politicians, corporations and power-brokers who have savaged your future. You believe in the demigod of free-market capitalism (because Rush and Beck tell you so) even as that system steals from you, your children and their children to come. You see the writing on the wall and perceive it as runes carved there by devils and socialists and Muslim fellow-travelers, because you have been well-trained to do so. You would not know the truth of your life if it voided its bladder in your face, because you are inculcated with a world-view that is sustained by hatred, distrust, fear, and the clannish bonding of the cult-bound who think as you do, and so are "saved."

Then he starts in on 'em. Go.

Well, the fundies flubbed it as usual, but the Mayans were never wrong! I think. Hard to find one who's talking, but ON TO 2012!

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