Jerry Falwell has come and gone. Few noticed his coming, many more noted his passing and not all of those did so in sorrow.
I hesitate to speak of him now because that is to honor him in a sense, but not to speak now is to pretend he didn’t matter. And he did matter. But what was the matter with Falwell?
As a child I was shocked when I first heard the old Baptist maxim (filched, unknowingly to me from the Old Bard) that “Even the devil can quote scripture.” I couldn’t really beleve that until Jerry Falwell shined a great light on that. There is another axiom that proclaims scripture alone is sufficeient for salvation. That is, if a person learns enough scrpiture, he or she can find the truth to eternal salvation. Jerry Falwell showed that reliance only upon scripture can create a “scripture savant”, an amazing and entertaining performer who hits all the right keys but doesn't really know what he is doing.
Falwell often preached from the top of a great pile of stones he had prepared to hurl at those who turned to abortion as a last desperate hope. Mostly poor, young, confused children themselves, whom he would blame as adultresses and condem to bear "their" child, who for many of them was not of their own intent. Then, after they birthed they could labor on and on endlessly through medical and educational and cultural and governmental and economic gestations seeking care and help for their child who was really sired by domination, disinterest and contempt.
Falwell also showed us that gays and lesbians were largely responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001. They brought this event upon all of us by their being alive, according to Jerry Falwell. But since Christians believe that all people were created by God and we know that approximately one out of every ten human beings are homosexual we must either assume that God is a failure at producing people – because a 10% rejection rate would be unacceptable ANYWHERE, by ANYBODY, or since scripture says all men are created in the image of God, then obviously God is telling us something about who “He” really is. God is gay? Well, obviously. How wonderful. Falwell though created god in Falwell’s own image. How sad. Falwell was truly a preacher of the little god.
©John Womack, 2007. All rights reserved
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Immus' Problem
He had a lot of followers but not many friends. He was a pioneer in lots of ways, way out there all alone, taking shots at whatever pleased him to shoot. He seemed to some to be a poor man's philosoper but he was all alone in this too.
He fails the test of democratic dialog as presented from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and he does not fit with the democratic foundation of John Stuart Mill, Hume, Kant, Emerson, Bayer, Rousseau and many others – all these and their thoughts and opinions are foriegn to those of Immus.
Teachings from Moses, Jesus, Mohommed, Buddha, Ghandi, Dahli Lama, all of these and their ideals appear foreign to Immus. There is no room for any of them in his ideas.
His appeal is carefully confined to the lower class of Americans who are in debt, confused, worried and fearful of the future. These are people who don’t understand the nature of their problems and simply want someone to show them what to do without telling them to go do it. To these people he offers a target where they can focus their fearful gaze and instead of understanding the nature of the corporate cancer that is stealing their lives away, they are told to fear those who are even worse off than they are.
He is a master of inuendo. That’s what I grew up with in Mississippi: “You know what those people are like.” He belittles those whom he perceives as inferior to him and his pack, hence the “nappy-headed ho’s” comment was a typical snicker stick that his crowd could giggle over.
I see nothing positive in his entire presentation. His approach is to attack the wrong targets – for example placing blame on Snoopy Dogg Dog as being a black performer of bad rap instead of putting the blame for all of that on the marketing processes that made Mr. Dog moderately rich, and the the corporations who support him so powerfully wealthy in money and social power.
Immus seems to me to be a fundamental facist. The solutions to his problems are not to understand the nature of our problems and to work together to improve the lives of the people affected by them, but to build walls, to isolate “his people” into some “nation” that will be “pure” and will always instantly know the “proper” solution to every problem, and will obiedently serve some not yet identified powerful leader. He and his ilk are peddlers of human values for those who have none of their own. Tells people what to think instead of how to think.
Fascists always work on the people like a cook serves up Gyro’s, shaving off the outermost pieces of the lamb in that case, the population in this case, as the meat slowly turn over the fire. First the Jews, perhaps, then the homosexuals, then – like Hitler – the communists and then the gypsies, the blacks and browns don’t have to go – completely – as long as they can be subservient and helpful, Asians make a nice slice, Indians might be next, and so on. There are always people on the outside and always new people learning to slice. What’s the solution? Education is our only hope, but schools no longer educate students, so we have to teach each other. People like Immus, Limbaugh, Michael Savage and many others, take advantage of this great vacuum of knowledge, it is their home behind the baseboards of civilization.
© John Womack, 2007. All rights reserved.
He fails the test of democratic dialog as presented from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and he does not fit with the democratic foundation of John Stuart Mill, Hume, Kant, Emerson, Bayer, Rousseau and many others – all these and their thoughts and opinions are foriegn to those of Immus.
Teachings from Moses, Jesus, Mohommed, Buddha, Ghandi, Dahli Lama, all of these and their ideals appear foreign to Immus. There is no room for any of them in his ideas.
His appeal is carefully confined to the lower class of Americans who are in debt, confused, worried and fearful of the future. These are people who don’t understand the nature of their problems and simply want someone to show them what to do without telling them to go do it. To these people he offers a target where they can focus their fearful gaze and instead of understanding the nature of the corporate cancer that is stealing their lives away, they are told to fear those who are even worse off than they are.
He is a master of inuendo. That’s what I grew up with in Mississippi: “You know what those people are like.” He belittles those whom he perceives as inferior to him and his pack, hence the “nappy-headed ho’s” comment was a typical snicker stick that his crowd could giggle over.
I see nothing positive in his entire presentation. His approach is to attack the wrong targets – for example placing blame on Snoopy Dogg Dog as being a black performer of bad rap instead of putting the blame for all of that on the marketing processes that made Mr. Dog moderately rich, and the the corporations who support him so powerfully wealthy in money and social power.
Immus seems to me to be a fundamental facist. The solutions to his problems are not to understand the nature of our problems and to work together to improve the lives of the people affected by them, but to build walls, to isolate “his people” into some “nation” that will be “pure” and will always instantly know the “proper” solution to every problem, and will obiedently serve some not yet identified powerful leader. He and his ilk are peddlers of human values for those who have none of their own. Tells people what to think instead of how to think.
Fascists always work on the people like a cook serves up Gyro’s, shaving off the outermost pieces of the lamb in that case, the population in this case, as the meat slowly turn over the fire. First the Jews, perhaps, then the homosexuals, then – like Hitler – the communists and then the gypsies, the blacks and browns don’t have to go – completely – as long as they can be subservient and helpful, Asians make a nice slice, Indians might be next, and so on. There are always people on the outside and always new people learning to slice. What’s the solution? Education is our only hope, but schools no longer educate students, so we have to teach each other. People like Immus, Limbaugh, Michael Savage and many others, take advantage of this great vacuum of knowledge, it is their home behind the baseboards of civilization.
© John Womack, 2007. All rights reserved.
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