| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"BLUERHYMER" |
| Date: |
06 Oct 2004 12:13:45 PM |
| Object: |
Does God Hate Florida? |
Friday, October 1, 2004 (SF Gate)
Does God Hate Florida?
After four brutal hurricanes, why aren't Bush evangelicals talking about the
Almighty's wrath?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
You know it's true.
You know if, say, San Francisco had just been blasted by not two, not
three, but fully four lethal trailer-park-eating earthquakes, why, the
Right-wing Bible set would be yelping with barely disguised joy.
Of course they would. They'd be jumping up and down and saying I told you
so and pointing to Volume 18 of "Left Behind" and claiming that this was,
of course, God's wrath upon the sinners and the gays and the heathens and
sodomites and the tofu eaters and the Toyota Priuses and the yoga studios
and the anal sex and the incense burners and the Zen meditation centers.
Ha ha snicker, they'd say. Serves you right, they'd sneer. Shoulda voted
Republican, they'd add. And then they'd go make lime Jell-O and watch
Raymond.
But of course, right now it's about 68 crisp n' flawless pre-fall degrees
here in God's Fetish Dungeon, all gorgeous and progressive and
non-ravaged, whereas along the Gulf Coast they just finished battening
down the hatches and sandbagging the one millionth salmon-colored strip
mall and anchoring Jeb Bush's ego in a vat of swamp water and evacuating
nearly one million stunned and exhausted citizens for the fourth time, as
hurricane Jeanne hammered down and shredded the state. Ironic, if it
weren't so sad.
Which sort of makes you think, if I were a God-fearing right-wing BushCo
fundamentalist and not, say, a neo-pagan Zen atheist Buddhist Taoist
Zoroastrian Orgasmican who uses "Passion of the Christ" DVDs as Astroglide
coasters, I might offer up the notion that maybe, just maybe Bush's
neoconservative God is more than a mite peeved with the Neon Stucco
Retirement State. You think?
Maybe He's more than a little perturbed at the current situation, and
maybe I'd suggest that some sort of karmic retribution was at hand, some
sort of divinely important message was trying to come through loud and
clear, and the message was that we'd better not have a repeat of 2000's
bogus election, or else.
Is this possible? Shouldn't the fundamentalist evangelicals be all over
this angry God-spittin' storm thing like the FCC on Janet Jackson?
Because as God surely knows, BushCo's swiping of the White House quickly
led to an unprecedented and incredibly violent mauling of the planet, the
rolling back of 30 years of environmental protections and the rejection of
global warming as a major life-threatening issue, as the Almighty could
only sit there, stunned and appalled as the rest of us, as BushCo turned
America into this heartless warmongering wildly disrespected global thug
who seems to care about as much for Mother Nature as ***** Cheney cares for
butterfly sanctuaries.
Funny, then, how there's been nary a peep about Florida's storm-tossed
woes from Bush's born-again Bible set. Nary a mention of how these deadly,
brutal storms might be some sort of sign, a cosmic signal that All is Not
Well. All we get is poor, homoerotically desperate Jimmy Swaggart saying
he'd kill any gay man who looked at him romantically. Which is just so
cute, in a violently sickening sort of way. I mean, dream on, Jimmy.
Clearly, it would appear that you can only claim God's wrath is at hand
when the people being wrathed upon do not, naturally, vote Republican.
After all, as any fundamentalist Republican will tell you, God only smites
those places that really deserve it (sorry, Haiti), and of course in
America to deserve it means you have to have lots of environmental
activism and vegetarian restaurants and recycling programs and gay pride
street fairs and you have to regularly do things with silicon sex toys
that would make Lynne Cheney scream and cry and then shudder with secret
delight.
(Ironically, to most of us, these are the very things that make S.F.
blessed and divine and make us God's favoritest vibrating bath toy in the
first place. But that's another column.)
So then, the vicious hurricanes can't possibly be God's wrath, because
Florida is Jeb Bush Country and everyone knows all Bushes are blessed WASP
Mafioso with first-class seats on the glory train to salvation, and
therefore the storms can only be explained by that other barely tolerable
thing the Bible set really hates trying to comprehend: science.
OK then. So, if I were a scientist, maybe I'd be pointing out how four
horrific hurricanes in a row, when combined with the various environmental
atrocities slapping the planet at an unprecedented rate along with the
melting of the polar ice shelves, might just be some sort of prime
indicator, some sort of potent and irrefutable sign that maybe, just
maybe, global climate change should be a major concern of any government
administration, and not, as BushCo views it, as an obnoxious afterthought
to be ignored and openly blocked and concerned about only if it somehow
threatens your Lockheed Martin profits.
But wait. That can't be right. It can't be science because the storms
can't be in any way related to climate change or global warming, because
as Bush policy has shown, nature is a merely a huge, exploitable sandbox
for the rich and global warming is a big fat liberal myth and the Kyoto
Treaty is a pathetic joke despite all those reams of international,
world-class scientific evidence to the contrary. So, you know, screw
science.
So let's see: Not God's wrath. Not Mother Nature's fury or scientific
global-warming memento. Not karmic retribution. Not the planet recoiling
in pain. So then, where does that leave us?
Maybe there is no real explanation. Maybe the storms, like quantum physics
or Tom DeLay's nasty hairpiece or Muenster cheese, they just are.
Or maybe they're just a precursor, a warm-up, God practicing His scales
and tuning His big viola for the upcoming Cataclysm Symphony Opus No. 1,
coming all too soon to a tortured landscape near you. Could be, could be.
Or maybe it will only all make sense to the fundamentalist Right when
California finally gets smacked by the long-predicted Big One, the major
Earth-shattering west-coast quake that will swallow our big liberal state
whole and prove the existence of an angry white NASCAR-loving God and set
the wacky apocalypse in motion and Jimmy Swaggart will finally get laid
and everyone will get a free Hummer just for playing.
Or maybe it's none of those things. Maybe we just need to understand those
horrific hurricanes for what they really are: an honest mistake. It's
simple, really: God must have the map upside down.
Silly, silly God.
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
Mark's column archives are here
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on
SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does.
Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 SF Gate
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| User: "Ike" |
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| Title: Re: Does God Hate Florida? |
06 Oct 2004 01:59:41 PM |
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"BLUERHYMER" <bluerhymer@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20041006131345.28660.00000333@mb-m05.aol.com...
Friday, October 1, 2004 (SF Gate)
Does God Hate Florida?
After four brutal hurricanes, why aren't Bush evangelicals talking about
the
Almighty's wrath?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
You know it's true.
You know if, say, San Francisco had just been blasted by not two, not
three, but fully four lethal trailer-park-eating earthquakes, why, the
Right-wing Bible set would be yelping with barely disguised joy.
Why not let the wackos speak for themselves so you can have a one-on-one
dialogue with them?
--
Freedom of thought entails no "Intellectual Property".
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| User: "TCS" |
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| Title: Re: Does God Hate Florida? |
06 Oct 2004 05:25:21 PM |
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On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 18:59:41 GMT, Ike <accordiondoc@mindspring.com> wrote:
"BLUERHYMER" <bluerhymer@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20041006131345.28660.00000333@mb-m05.aol.com...
Friday, October 1, 2004 (SF Gate)
Does God Hate Florida?
After four brutal hurricanes, why aren't Bush evangelicals talking about
the
Almighty's wrath?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
You know it's true.
You know if, say, San Francisco had just been blasted by not two, not
three, but fully four lethal trailer-park-eating earthquakes, why, the
Right-wing Bible set would be yelping with barely disguised joy.
Why not let the wackos speak for themselves so you can have a one-on-one
dialogue with them?
Ok, now you've spoken. Too bad you didn't have anything to say.
.
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| User: "Ike" |
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| Title: Re: Does God Hate Florida? |
06 Oct 2004 07:46:26 PM |
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"TCS" <The-Central-Scrutinizer@p.o.b.o.x.com> wrote in message
news:slrncm8s6h.ucm.The-Central-Scrutinizer@linux.client.comcast.net...
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 18:59:41 GMT, Ike <accordiondoc@mindspring.com> wrote:
"BLUERHYMER" <bluerhymer@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20041006131345.28660.00000333@mb-m05.aol.com...
Friday, October 1, 2004 (SF Gate)
Does God Hate Florida?
After four brutal hurricanes, why aren't Bush evangelicals talking
about
the
Almighty's wrath?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
You know it's true.
You know if, say, San Francisco had just been blasted by not two,
not
three, but fully four lethal trailer-park-eating earthquakes, why, the
Right-wing Bible set would be yelping with barely disguised joy.
Why not let the wackos speak for themselves so you can have a one-on-one
dialogue with them?
Ok, now you've spoken. Too bad you didn't have anything to say.
How could you tell? I really said nothing.
--
Chinese accordions suck.
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| User: "John Baker" |
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| Title: Re: Does God Hate Florida? |
10 Oct 2004 01:05:57 AM |
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On 06 Oct 2004 17:13:45 GMT, (BLUERHYMER) wrote:
Friday, October 1, 2004 (SF Gate)
Does God Hate Florida?
No. He's just warning Jeb not to ***** with the election this time
around. :-)
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