Ghoul agenda

Once again, the United States has been hit by a mass murder.  Fifty confirmed dead, more than that injured.  My heart is torn in half thinking about over a hundred people who had only intended to spend a fun night dancing, drinking, and socializing, and found themselves the targets of a terrorist.

But you know what galls me more?  Before the bodies cooled, before family and friends had been notified, before all of the victims had even been identified, there was an explosion of rhetoric designed for one purpose and one purpose only; to use the tragedy to score political points.  These ghouls couldn't even wait a few days before twisting the deaths of fifty people to serve their own ideologies.

Let's start with Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who shortly after the massacre tweeted a verse from the bible -- Galatians 6:7.  "Do not be deceived.  God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows."  Patrick was immediately excoriated for his callous response, and as a result deleted the tweet, following it up with a statement about how "stunned and saddened" he is over the event.  Some have generously speculated that Patrick's post had nothing to do with the Orlando killings -- he does post bible verses on a daily basis -- but given his anti-LGBT vitriol in the past, I'm to be forgiven for being somewhat doubtful of that.

Others were less equivocal about it.  Firebrand evangelical preacher Steven Anderson stated that he was happy the massacre occurred, because after all, the victims were "just disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar."  Anderson went on to point fingers at others he said were going to use the tragedy to gain political ground, in a statement that should be an odds-on contender for the 2016 gold medal in Unintentional Irony:

But the bad news is that this is now gonna be used, I’m sure, to push for gun control, where, you know, law-abiding normal Americans are not gonna be allowed to have guns for self-defense.  And then I’m sure it’s also gonna be used to push an agenda against so-called “hate speech.”  So Bible-believing Christian preachers who preach what the Bible actually says about homosexuality — that it’s vile, that it’s disgusting, that they’re reprobates — you know, we’re gonna be blamed.  Like, “It’s all extremism! It’s not just the Muslims, it’s the Christians!”

Because saying that homosexuals deserve to be gunned down because of their sexual orientation is, apparently, "not hate speech."

But Anderson's statement brings us to the whole conflict over gun ownership.  Because it wasn't even an hour after the murders hit the news that I saw this:

And this:

And this:

Then, there's this post implying that it's Obama's policies that are at fault here:

Because obviously, there can't be any reason for those statistics other than, you know, Obama.

Not to be outdone, Donald Trump commented on the killings, but as befits a sociopathic narcissist, made it all about him.  "Appreciate the congrats for being right about radical Islamic terrorism," he tweeted.  "I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance.  We must be smart!"

How about some mention of the victims, here?  No, of course not.  That would distract from his incessant focus on himself.  And because that wasn't enough, he followed it up by a sly implication that Obama was not only complicit, but in agreement with the shooter.  He "gets [the motives of the killer] better than anyone understands," Trump said in an interview yesterday.

Then the conspiracy theorists got involved.  The Pulse massacre was a "false flag."  The shooting victims weren't really shot, they were "crisis actors."  And combining all of the above, for a trifecta of heartless lunacy, we have none other than the inimitable Alex Jones, saying that the shootings and the recent killing of singer Christina Grimmie were false flags engineered by Obama to outlaw guns.

I just have one question, here.  What happened to the tradition of a moment of silence when tragedy occurs?  What happened to showing some respect for the people who have died, and those whose lives have been changed irrevocably?  What about compassion?

And most of all, what about forgetting about yourself and your narrow little worldview for a while, and putting yourself in the shoes of people who are suffering?

Yes, there have been tremendous outpourings of sympathy.  There have been donations of time, money, and blood for the victims.  Such times bring out the best in us, pull us together, tap into unknown wellsprings of love and caring.

But for some, it only tightens them down on fears, anger, and hatred.  And for those people, I have only one thing to say: shut the fuck up.

Secession talk

I mentioned yesterday that the tactics being employed by the ultra-religious faction in the United States were seeming increasingly desperate.  And in a rather troubling example of synchronicity, just after publishing yesterday's post, I ran across an article in the Washington Times wherein we read that Douglas MacKinnon, a conservative columnist, author, and former speechwriter for Presidents Reagan and Bush I, is recommending that the southern states secede.

My first thought was, "Didn't they try this once?  And it didn't end so well?"

Sure, says MacKinnon.  The Confederacy had seceded "peacefully" and "legally," and then "President Lincoln waged an illegal war."

Makes you wonder about the whole Fort Sumter thing, doesn't it?  Never mind, MacKinnon probably would say that the North should have abandoned the place and given up.  It was their fault they fought back, ya know?

His argument only gets more bizarre from there, though.  The reason MacKinnon wants the South to re-secede is mostly religion.  Oh, yeah, and guns and evil environmentalists:

A growing number of our leaders seem determined to erase our borders... [to] do away with the rule-of-law, expand the nanny state into a theology, bankrupt or punish American companies in the name of fighting climate change, do away with the Second Amendment, censor or demonize the history of western civilization and replace it with multiculturalism, give every kid a trophy and turn them into wimps… and attack all faith in God with a particular and unhinged bias against the Christian faith.

Righty-o.  And what would he call this new god-fearing, gun-loving, zero-tree-hugger nation?

"Reagan."  I'm not making this up.  At least, MacKinnon said, until they could come up with a better name.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

"I simply want those who believe the downward spiral of our country is irreversible, to know that an option to preserve their values does exist," MacKinnon said.

It's all too easy to laugh at the likes of MacKinnon.  After all, his decrying of the United States as becoming a "nanny state," and then saying that the South should rise up and be a pinnacle of economic rectitude, ignores the fact that three of the top four states that rely most heavily on federal assistance are Mississippi (#1), Alabama (#3), and Louisiana (#4).  And despite the ongoing fear-talk that President Obama is COMING FOR OUR GUNS, he's nearing the end of his second term, and guess what?  Guns still abound.  If he's after the guns, dude better get his ass in gear, because he's wasted six years not confiscating guns and destroying the Second Amendment.  If he procrastinates further, he'll only have himself to blame when we remain as heavily armed as ever.

But if MacKinnon thinks that even in the South there's uniformity of belief, he's delusional.  Okay, a lot of the Southeast is heavily conservative and majority Christian, but "majority" doesn't mean "unanimity."  What are the southern atheists, liberals, and environmentalists to do?

Leave, is my guess.  I've heard it before, but usually referring to the United States as a whole; "America is a Christian nation.  If you don't like it, get out."

So there's our wacko screed of the day.  I live in hope that people like MacKinnon are a dying breed, but even if I'm right, they don't seem to be ready to Go Gentle Into That Good Night.  They're apparently more about the "rage, rage" part.

"Crisis actors:" the conspiracy theorists reach a new low

Whenever I think the conspiracy theorists of the world have reached an all-time low, and can go no lower, they surprise me by getting out the shovels.

Of course, it's hard to beat the "9/11 is an inside job" thing.  Believe me, I'm no apologist for much of what our government does, but the idea that government operatives would bomb the World Trade Center, costing over a thousand lives, in order to provide false pretenses for entering a war against Iraq, is absurd and reprehensible.  And of course, you have the ongoing chemtrails foolishness, blaming the government (acting through HAARP, or some chemical additive to jet fuel, or both) for Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy -- as if nature by itself isn't good enough at cooking up disastrous storms.

But now we have a new nadir.  The contention:  the Sandy Hook massacre never happened.  No children were killed.  The grieving parents and horrified first-responders were actors.  The whole thing was set up by the government...

... to give momentum for overturning the Second Amendment.

Don't believe me?  Go here if you can stand to, where you can watch a video explaining the whole thing (I got through about five minutes of it before nausea forced me to shut it off).  Otherwise, perhaps a photograph will suffice:

The whole thing is thoroughly debunked in this link at Snopes; but that won't stop the conspiracy nuts, of course.  These are the same people who think that Theodore Roosevelt's son, Kermit Roosevelt, was an actor who played the part of Adolf Hitler during World War II (in this mythical version of world history, no Jews were killed in concentration camps), and was spirited away by American CIA agents after the war was over, and spent the rest of his life as... Walt Disney.

Again, if you don't believe me... [link]

So it's not like any amount of evidence is going to convince these people.  They have long since abandoned any respect for actual evidence, logic, and rationality for their own warped view of humanity.

You know, despite my poking fun at irrational beliefs, I really do try to be tolerant.  I do the best I can to understand people whose views differ from my own, and not just to be an arrogant asshole.  I really, honestly believe that everyone has a right to his/her own opinions, as long as those opinions don't include forcing me to believe differently than I do.

I might make an exception in the case of these folks, however.  It is my considered stance that these folks are badly in need of a punch in the jaw.  If they really think that anyone, anyone has the right to demean what the parents, friends, and community of the victims of the Sandy Hook killings went through (and are still going through), in order to promote their own ridiculous, counterfactual worldview -- well, all I can say is that they're wrong.  And somehow they should be forced to take down that website, and after that, vanish into the obscurity that they so richly deserve.