Throw it in the hoosegow

Throw it in the hoosegow October 27, 2014

Digby points out that talk of secession is, by definition, anti-American. When I was a kid, the right-wing boasted of its supposedly superior patriotism with slogans like “America: Love it or leave it.” It’s very odd to see the current right-wing still presuming its got a monopoly on patriotism while, at the same time, proudly declaring that it prefers “leave it” every time.

It’s just deeply weird, contradictory, and annoying, that the same people who obsess over all the empty symbols of patriotic gestures — lapel pins, reverent attentiveness during the national anthem, etc. — also are the likeliest to speak favorably of secession. (See also: Confederate flags, celebrating the “heritage” of the al-Qaida of the 19th century.)

Forget Frank Peretti. If you want to understand "spiritual warfare" talk, read this instead.
Forget Frank Peretti. If you want to understand “spiritual warfare” talk, read this instead.

• Since I don’t hesitate to criticize the U.S. Catholic bishops when they act like wanna-be power-brokers who wouldn’t recognize Jesus if he kicked over their table, let me also not hesitate to commend one of those bishops for behaving like a bishop should. Kudos to Dallas Bishop Kevin J. Farrell for housing the family of Thomas Eric Duncan during their quarantine for ebola. Here’s hoping Farrell’s action stirs some memory in his colleagues about hospitality toward pariahs being their job description.

Meanwhile, the media freak-out over ebola continues, even though twice as many Americans have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence this month as have ever died from the disease.

• Family Circle magazine still exists. Who knew?

Terry Firma directs our attention to the latest from Charisma news editor and sex-demon beat reporter Jennifer LeClaire. It’s about witches and it’s about as strange as you might expect. “You Empower What You Worship,” LeClaire warns, disagreeing with the majority of Christians and Jews who teach that divine authority is not dependent on the sacrifices performed by God’s adherents. Still, though, it’s helpful to know that I’ve already studied Charisma’s ideology of “spiritual warfare” without realizing I was doing it back when I first read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

• For a look at very different kind of spiritual warfare, Adrien Chen visits the trenches in the battle against the cosmic powers over this present darkness — meet “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed.

Steve Thorngate and Marci Glass point out that perhaps a for-profit wedding mill called “The Hitching Post” doesn’t make the most compelling poster-child for the defenders of “biblical marriage.” Glass’s post is appropriately hilarious. She writes:

I hate to be the one to point this out to the Reverends Knapp, but they are not, in fact, pastors of a church. They own a wedding mill. …

They claim to have married “roughly 35,000 couples” which indicates how discerning they are in making sure the couples they marry are really ready to enter into this life long covenant. In the 25 years they’ve owned the Hitching Post, that’s around 1,400 weddings a year. When you’re officiating only 1,400 weddings a year, you have plenty of time to offer pre-marital counseling and have conversations with the couples who are entering into this sacred covenant of “biblical marriage.

For additional evidence that the rear-guard reaction against marriage equality has descended beyond self-parody, see this story from North Carolina, where a local magistrate has resigned rather than have to officiate civil marriages between same-sex couples. The now-former judge’s name is Gilbert Breedlove. (If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbably fiction …)

• Now that we know for certain that the 401(k) experiment was a complete disaster, there are only two sides to this political issue: Should we be doubling Social Security benefits? Or should we be tripling them? I would like to see our media covering both sides of this debate.

 


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