Opening the floodgates

I was discussing with a friend a couple of days ago the devastating floods that have hit Texas, caused by an aberrant weather pattern that is showing no signs of going away any time soon.

"Given that there are so many climate change deniers in Texas," my friend asked, "what do you think they'll blame it on?"

"Oh, I dunno," I responded.  "Probably gay people and President Obama, I'd guess."

You know, there are times I'd rather not be right.

Flooding in Houston [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Just yesterday, a woman who called into Bryan Fischer's American Family Association-sponsored radio talk show Focal Point had the following to say:

If God is judging Texas, it’s because of the witchcraft and sodomy that we’ve allowed to run rampant...  [T]he places that are underwater [are] are overrun with witchcraft and sodomy.  If you go into those areas, you can just see it...  Houston has a whole area that is like Sodom and Gomorrah.  It even has a sodomite mayor.

What I'm wondering is how god could design a flood that would only hit witches and gay people.  I mean, it's not like there's any way to stop flood waters from wiping out pretty much anyone in their path, so unless god in his Infinite Wisdom and Mysterious Ways induced all of the sodomites and witchcraft practitioners to build their houses on low ground, he's pretty much smiting everyone at the moment.

It brings up the rather amusing mental image of god at a a giant computer that has a map with flashing red lights every time someone has the wrong kind of sex, and a pull-down menu for different kinds of natural disasters that can be unleashed.  "What?  Fellatio in Tulsa, Oklahoma?  THIS CALLS FOR A TORNADO."

But you'll be relieved to know that there's not just sex and witchcraft behind the floods, there's also the looming, sinister, evil, all-powerful figure of...

... Barack Obama.

Why would President Obama send floods to Texas, you might ask?  Is it just because Texas is conservative?  Because if that's it, he should be flooding most of the southeastern United States.  There has to be more to it, right?

Of course, right.  Obama is flooding Texas because they caught on to what he was doing regarding Jade Helm 15.

For those of you who have not been keeping up with the latest conspiracy theories, Jade Helm 15 is a set of military maneuvers taking place in Texas that were a front for a government takeover of the state that was so top-secret that the Army announced what they were intending to do three months early.  That's how sneaky these guys are.  "I have an idea!  Let's confuse and confound them by telling them all our plans!  They'll be so baffled by this ploy that when we follow through with them, they'll be caught completely unawares!"

So apparently Obama got mad that the Texans were on to his cunning plot, and weren't just cooperating and letting him and his thugs declare martial law and herd everyone into FEMA Death Camps conveniently disguised as WalMarts.  He got so mad, in fact, that he used his super-powerful weather weapons to teach Texas a lesson.  Says writer Susan Duclos:

As I'm looking through breakingnews [sic] headlines, and seeing the continuous references to the extreme weather so concentrated over TX, and coupled with the continuous chemtrailing that happens throughout the US, I can't help but think that what is going on right now as part of the Jade Helm "exercize" [sic], could not actually be the domestic roll out of weather warfare on an agressive [sic] scale. We know they can control the weather to at least some degree. We know that the chemtrailing over CA and in the Pacific moddifies [sic] the jet stream to both keep CA dry and to force that precipitation east towards TX and other southern states.  We know that Jade Helm is "pretending" that TX is a hostile enemy that must be engaged.  The millitary is already rolling out across the state as part of this "drill".  Why then, is it not reasonable to assume that as part of this "mock civil war drill" that they would not practice using the tools that they have in their arsenal?

Let me just recommend, Ms. Duclos, that you not only use your computer's function called "spell check," that you consult a dictionary and look up the definition of the word "reasonable."

So there you have it: this isn't a weather event, it's either a punishment by god for gay sex and witchcraft, or it's the result of a weather weapon wielded by Barack "Professor Evil" Obama.  Myself, I just hope that the rains stop, because there's been enough devastation and death already.  And also so that these loons will shut up and go back to their previous hobby, which is probably pulling on the straps of their straitjackets with their teeth.

Huckabee, Fischer, and the politicization of tragedy

I, like many others, have spent the last twelve hours trying to figure out how to wrap my mind around what happened yesterday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  A 20 year old man, almost certainly mentally ill, took the lives of 26 people, including his mother (one of the teachers at the school), the principal, the school psychologist, and twenty children between the ages of 5 and 10.  A tragedy of this magnitude is hard to comprehend; when I watched some of the video clips coming in from Newtown, when I listened to an emotional President Obama's voice cracking as he delivered his response to the nation, I could do nothing but sit there and cry helplessly myself.

Each of us deals with tragedy in our own way.  My (many) Christian friends on Facebook have posted comments that they are comforted by the thought that Jesus has gathered these children in.  My (also many) secular/non-religious friends have offered their thoughts and condolences to the bereaved family members of those innocent victims.  Members of both groups have voiced their renewed commitment to creating a loving, compassionate world, a world in which things like this don't happen ever again.  And at times like this, we are forced to revisit and question our laws regarding access to mental health care and gun control, which is right and proper.  We respond by comforting the grieving, giving solace to our own shock, and considering how to prevent such horrors in the future.

Well, at least most of us do.  Some of us respond by using the deaths of 26 innocent people to score political points. Consider former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's response: "We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said in an interview on Fox News yesterday.  "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

I watched the clip of Huckabee's interview with my mouth hanging open a little.  And at first, I thought, "Why bother writing about this?  Huckabee is a sanctimonious twit.  You already knew that."  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn't just keep silent.

Do you really believe that, Mr. Huckabee?  Your god is that petty, that heartless, that bloodthirsty?  Your concept of the Lord of Lords is that he is sitting there on his throne in heaven, and he's thinking, "I'm just fed up with America's commitment to the separation of church and state.  Ever since they eliminated prayer in schools, I've been getting more and more pissed off.  Hey, I know!  I'll send a crazed gunman to shoot a bunch of kids!  Yeah, that's the ticket!"?

And I realized: no, of course he doesn't think that.  He's a shill.  He is shamelessly using the grief and outrage of others to gain political capital.  He's not alone; every time something like this happens, you hear others of his cloth -- people like Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh -- do precisely the same thing.  They don't even stop for a second to say, "Let's take a break from the politically-motivated finger-pointing.  Let's use this horror to incite us to do good.  Hug your kids, help the people around you, do what you can to make your own community a safe place.  There will be other times to push politics; now is a time to come together, put aside our differences, and remember our common commitment to a better world."  No.  Before the gunshots have even stopped, they've already started manipulating the situation to further their own ends.

If you think this sort of thing is unique to Huckabee, who had already established his reputation as a heartless asshole by responding the same way to the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado earlier this year, think again.  Take a look at this video if you can stand to,  in which American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer states that god could have stopped the shooter, but didn't because "god is not going to go where he's not wanted."  If kids were allowed to pray every day in schools, Fischer claims, the whole thing never would have happened.  I'm sickened by someone who would stoop this low, who would callously think, "Wow, now people will really see that I was right about religion in public schools!" and give a speech like this on the same damned day that the murders occurred.

The word "reprehensible" doesn't even begin to cover this sort of behavior.  I can only hope that the people who hear these men talking, religious and non-religious alike, will be repulsed by the cold, calculated politicization of what should be a cause for national mourning.  And I hope that enough of them -- and especially of the Christians to whom Huckabee and Fischer are attempting to pander -- will tell them to sit down and shut the hell up, and that they will get the message that anyone with an ounce of compassion would react to their shilling with nausea.