Norbizness: The Southern Death Cult

Norbizness has a response to Peggy Noonan's most recent batshit wailings on the Schiavo case. I've tried to stay out of the mess because every blogger and her sister are on it, but I have something to add to that title up there.

I live smack dab in the middle of the Southern Death Cult. They don't call it that, of course, but there really is such a thing, and the Bush boys are pretty much its leaders. Evangelicals take their religion seriously. They fight over things like whether you have to be baptised in a creek or if your congregation can use that nice baptistry they just bought; whether women can cut their hair or wear slacks; whether watching your kids play soccer after school constitutes "gaming" and is therefore not allowed. They take these issues seriously because it's all about going to heaven. They are going - you are not. The pay off is that they sacrifice living now so they get to party with Jesus later, and watch the rest of the world die in the final Tribulation. Nice, huh?

In this life, because they tend not to drink or screw around (or at least pretend that they don't - a lot of them are twisted hypocrites) they love a good funeral. That's when they get to shine. They get to bring pot luck and sit around the funeral home feeling pious and superior. They get to hear some God-fearing preaching and singing. They dress up, and visit and catch up with their neighbors. They tut-tut about Harry Potter and Sponge Bob because some TV Preacher said they were Satanic and that's got to be true because he's a Preacher, after all, and an expert 'cause they said so on TV. As far as they're concerned, AIDS kills all the right people.

I'm not making this stuff up. Those are all true events of which I have personal knowledge. They think G.W. was annointed by "God" and that he's going to see them through the end times. In the mean time, they're going to save as many of us as they can. Except for the gays. And the Jews. And the Catholics. And the coloreds er, Blacks, and Mexicans (what's a "Hispanic"?) and the Abortionists - though you can't get an abortion where they live, anyway, and the Feminists, because they won't marry a good Christian man even if he promises not to hit them too often and to give them a generous allowance. Oh, and don't forget the heathens in the Middle East - not point in differentiating between the different countries - they're all the same. Now they have to support Israel because Jesus was a Jew (but he was really a white guy with blonde-ish hair and blue eyes and not dark like those foreigners) and because the Jews have to rebuild the Temple so Jesus can come back and condemn the world to hell. Oh yeah - don't forget the hippies and the Democrats. They'll burn, for sure.

Now, all of this might seem quaint or amusing if these people didn't vote and steal elections. They've never considered for a minute that what they've been taught is wrong, and they have no capacity for abstract thought, so they never think another way might be just as valid, or even valid at all. They think and feel therefore Terri must think and feel because they see her right there so she has to have the same perceptions that they do. They're so sure they're right that they'll kill people to prove it - they'll put hits out on grieving husbands and judges, blow up clinics or hospices, and "blow them away in the name of the Lord".

If I sound like I'm making light of this, rest assured - these people are deadly serious and they're in control of our government. They don't learn from experience, or from science, and they can convince themselves of anything. They will use their religion to justify their hates, fears and greed and the likes of Peggy Noonan, Pat Buchannan and Robert Novak will sing their praises as they destroy our democracy because they're getting rich by exploiting these poorly educated people.