Fristicuffs

How about a double shot of stupid for a Friday evening. I'm talking, of course, about Fox News' resident chimp John Gibson commenting on the Senate's resident dirtbag Bill Frist's comments this week.

For those of you who don't pay attention to obnoxious theocratic bullshit, let me fill you in. Today's New York Times has the following article, linked to me by Americablog, headlined "Frist Set to Use Religious Stage on Judicial Issue." Yikes...

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

So, okay, Frist's argument is straightforward enough. He's saying that because Democrats are trying to block Republican judicial nominees, they're anti-Christian.

This argument is incredibly stupid for a whole bunch of reasons. First of all, what are Democrats supposed to do? Not object to anything? Allow Republicans to stock the federal courts with judges who go against everything Democrats stand for?

But that's hardly the issue. The issue is that Bush is trying to stack the court with religious judges, judges who want to rule based on the Bible and not on the Constitution. And because Democrats disagree with that, he wants to paint them as anti-Christian instead of what they are, which is pro-American.

Because America isn't about enforcing the laws in the Bible. No country could be, because the Bible's laws are inconsistant and often contradictory or nonsensical. They call for people's hands and tongues to be cut off, for rape and forced marriage to be permissable in certain situations, for slavery to be not only legalized but commonplace and, oh yeah, for people who speak out against any of the principles of the religion to be executed.

So trust me...you don't want to live in a society based on the Bible. But if you go against the concept at all publicly, then Bill Frist thinks you are anti-faith.

This has always been a useful rhetorical device. It's hard to motivate people to work hard for you and volunteer their time and money when it's already clear you control everything. Republicans keep requiring the support of their idiotic, inbred base, so they need to keep convincing them that America is working against them, and that they have to fight and scrap to get their way.

Any impartial person could clearly see that the powers of religion and repression are winning the war for America's hearts and minds right now...It's obvious. Look who won the 2004 election. Look at the outcry over Terri Schiavo, a braindead woman who only wanted to die. Look at the gay marriage issue. Christians have nothing to worry about. They have a wide majority in American demographics, and their interests are being watched over carefully. But still, it's easier to make the case that a vast anti-religion conspiracy is out to get them.

Fox News consistantly makes the same argument about the so-called "mainstream media" (or MSM). They say that the news is all slanted to the Left, so brave pioneers like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh had to speak up to make the voice of the common man heard. Think of Bill O'Reilly's favorite catchphrase: who's looking out for you?

Now think of Bill O'Reilly's audience - middle and upper class middle aged white people. Who's looking out for them? Who isn't?

So, all this would be bad enough. The Senate Majority Leader declaring openly that he's fighting only for Christians against the forces of secular humanism kind of sucks for that whole freedom thing we had going in this country for a few hundred years. But then John Gibson has to go and write one of his signature head-up-his-ass columns and make it just a little bit worse.

However, Frist and others may have a point. And I think what we are seeing here is a pushback from the people of faith against a secularist, humanist, and anti-faith trend over the last, maybe, ten years or so.

Look at the pushback that came in the last election. The Dems were perceived as indifferent or sometimes even hostile to religion and they paid. Even Howard Dean now says so.

Gibson once again bases his entire argument on random, unsubstantiated assumptions and insinuations. For example, if Frist's comments are a "pushback," what are they pushing back against? What strides has secular humanism made in the last "ten years or so"? Howard Dean didn't argue that the Democrats were hostile to religion, he confirmed that anti-gay religious zealots probably had a hand to play in Bush's victory in 2004. That's not something to loudly champion if you're a Republican.

But I'll repeat the point to make it perfectly clear: it's easier to get people mad if you claim that they are pushing back against a hostile force, rather than being the aggressor in a culture war. What we're seeing is an attempt by religious Americans to remake the country as a Christian Nation. But it sounds better to call it a "pushback" against villainous secular humanism, whatever that means.

Look at the last few Christmas seasons, when secularists running city halls and schools have tried to banish any possible religious symbols of the season in what appears to be an anti-Christian movement. Why anti-Christian? Because other, minority religions are celebrated and in most cases, only Christianity is banned.

Now this is just utter nonsense. The only way you'd believe Gibson here is if you never left your house from October to December. Banish symbols of Christianity around Christmastime? What? Are you insane? What about the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center (oh, excuse me...Freedom Plaza...ugh...)? That's in the middle of lefty New York City!

And what minority religions are being celebrated in place of Christianity? Hannukah? Because a menorah in a window doesn't really count for anything much. Ramadan? I'd hardly say that Americans are tripping over themselves to recognize that particular faith. And I can't even think of a Hindu celebration that comes at the end of the year, so it's certainly not that one.

Please, John, illuminate me. Exactly what the hell are you talking about here?

Gibson's just parroting the weak argument forwarded last December by his colleague-in-hate Bill O'Reilly, who blew up a few individual cases of people trying to remove manger scenes from public property into a fictitious nationwide campaign against the holiday of Christmas.

There's no campaign against Christmas. It simply doesn't exist. The fact that Gibson continues to write columns about this reflects not only the fallacy of his argument but the utter vapidity of his entire outlook.

So, the only thing left John has to back up his case about an anti-Christian bias is a minor item about a cross in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert:

Just this week, a federal court in Los Angeles insisted against a cross on a hilltop in the Mojave Desert — federal land — come down and suggested that a solution to keep it up, involving a land swap which would put the piece of land in private hands, was a ruse to keep an unconstitutional cross on government land.

A land-swap exactly like it just occurred in San Diego in order for a landmark cross to remain. It was done in San Francisco, too. But it can't be done in this case in the wide-open Mojave Desert. Why? Ya think just maybe somebody's got some animosity for a cross that's so ingrained there is no permissible solution for the cross to remain?

If it's the wide-open Mojave Desert, and there's no one around who could possibly care, why does a large cross need to be stationed there? To me, symbols like this reflect a sort of proprietary intimidation. It says that this land belongs to Christians, and others aren't welcome.

I drove across the country once, and as soon as you enter Texas from Oklahoma on the I-40, you pass an enormous silver cross. This actually did have some effect on my mental state. I suddenly felt less comfortable, less welcome as a non-Christian, than I did at any other time during the trip (it didn't help that, not 10 minutes later, I received the only speeding ticket of my life to date).

So I think that's really why the cross went up there, and why it should be taken down. But really, isn't this a minor land dispute? Isn't this just a distraction John's hoping to offer on behalf of the Republicans, who use minor issues like this to deflect criticism from their actual policies? Right now, Republicans are fighting an illegal war overseas, are passing a bankruptcy bill that will cripple many lower-class Americans, are planning an overhaul of Social Security that will be more costly while providing fewer benefits and are attempting to trample the civil rights of gay Americans. But they get away with it by distracting everyone with this mindless culture war crap, the Terri Schiavo case and the cross on the mountaintop and the Ten Commandments in the classroom.

Please, I beg of you, don't fall for it.