In honor of President's Day, this seemed appropriate.
You may remember me mentioning last week, Hubby is reading a new book , Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America, by John Avlon. This is newsworthy in and of itself, as lately he's not prone to read anything outside of CNN news updates and articles published by The Cato Institute (www.catoinstitue.org).
For those of you, like me, who have now left their comfort zone, we'll go back to basics for a minute. The definition of a wingnut: someone who holds extreme political views. These guys/gals could be extreme right or extreme left, and in many cases, are extremely unstable. Mr. Avlon, among others, believes that the wingnuts, who constitute the 'lunatic fringe', are enabling, and in some cases expediting the 'fall of Rome'.
In honor of President's Day, Mr. Avlon dedicated his column (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-14/praying-for-obamas-death/) to one of the wannabe-Wingnuts mentioned in his book, Pastor Wiley Drake, of the First Southern Baptist Church in Orange County, California.
Pastor Preposterous, or P.Preppy* as he shall be referred to going forward, has been in the news quite a bit since last summer, mainly for the blatant call to his whackjob followers to participate in what is known among wingnuts as the "Imprecatory Prayer". This is explained, in layman's terms, as people praying for the death of a leader, in this case President Obama.
*I toyed with Pastor Plate-In-His-Head, but decided I didn't want to put him in the same category and offend people who have actually had lobotomies.
Psalm 109:8 is the basis for this very Christian approach to seeking change in leadership. It reads, “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership” followed by “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.” Nice! (pronounced 'nah-eeee-ssss').
P.Preppy celebrated President's Day weekend, not by reflecting on all the great leaders who have helped to build this (formerly) great country, but by sending an email to his nutball congregation, telling them that Imprecatory Prayer is now their DUTY. E-to the-mother-frickin'-G-A-D-S = EGADS!!!
Were this just another whacko, spouting his gobbeldy-gook for nobody to hear, I would feel much better. It's not. There are lots of 'em, all over the country, and people are listening.
Avlon goes on to discuss another COMPLETE NUTTER, the Reverend Steven L. Anderson, who hails from the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. You may remember, Anderson was also the subject of much controversy last summer. And I quote, "I hate Barack Obama...I am not going to pray for his good. I am going to pray that he dies and goes to Hell.”
How much more Christ-like could one possibly strive to be?? TERRIFYING for me, that people would even turn up on Sunday to hear this guy sneeze, let alone speak. Religious freaks aside, what happened to having an ounce of faith, if not necessarily total agreement, in the way our political system works?
Have heard Hubby, at least eight times since he started reading the book over the weekend, muttering under his breath, "We are doomed". Not doomed to Hell by a fair but just God, doomed because this is going on all around us and nobody seems to be terribly concerned. When we came back to the US in '08 after being gone for almost 12 years, one of the first things that Bill noticed, and that bothered him tremendously, was the disappearing concept called Separation of Church and State. Surveys show that America's young voters are actually getting the memo and starting to embrace the idea - good to know, but these freaks of nature are still out there. When the 'lunatic fringe' is using the pulpit every Sunday to propogate it's own political agenda, how much scarier can it possibly get?
Check out Mr. Avlon's column from yesterday if you get a minute, well worth the read. And another contribution to CNN.com last June: http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/12/wingnuts-of-the-week-5/#more-3423
Don't think mayhem even begins to describe.
No comments:
Post a Comment