American Iran

I find it humorous, in the dark sense, that the people who lose their minds over Iran and are most in favor of, "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," are the very same ones who use it as a model for where the US needs to go. I know, they hate on the Islam and the brown folks practicing it and ... well after all Christianity is different. No, you complete and absolute idjits, it is not different in any remarkable fashion. Sure, the names are different and many of the prophets are different, but in reality they are remarkably similar.

It isn't just the theology that is similar, the abuses are congruent. When an Iranian claims to belong to a Muslim country is he different than the Christian calling this a Christian nation? Does he mean something different? Spain was a Christian nation as it persecuted the heretics and the Crusaders were all of Christian nations. The obliteration of the American Indian was justified by Christianity versus the heathens. If you take Christian nation seriously as an appellation for governments then Christ was a murderous torturing rapist bastard. I'm not the least sorry if you find that blasphemous, I never seriously made such a reference as to the Christianity of a government. Oddly enough the Christ of his own words was personally about as anti-establishment as it gets. He got hung up on that cross for a reason.

There are no politics in Christ's words, there is a whole lot about personal ethics and personal morality. He did not oppose the Jewish establishment as a matter of politics, he opposed it as a religious practice. The religious right and much of the Republican Party would stand that on its head, they would replace politics with religion and in so doing grant that religion the kind of power that Christ himself opposed. They would take the spirituality and personal morality of the religion and turn it into the brute force of government.

There abides in this nation the delusion that the law is moral. The most tangled and obscure arguments are brought forth to uphold this idea. Somehow the idea that social order and morality are the same thing has taken hold. The most simplistic argument devolves into equating the badness or immorality of murder and theft with laws against such behavior. It is as though Biblical morality having a congruence with public order and not being the same thing is beyond such people. They cannot wrap their heads around the idea that laws against theft make it unnecessary for me to track you down and blow your head off for taking my stuff - the government will take care of the issue for me in a much more controlled fashion. There are behaviors that make it impossible for us to live with each other and those behaviors need to be controlled.

If the Christian right ruled this country in the manner they call for the only way you could tell this place from Iran would be the call to prayer. That includes the current upheaval in that nation. There seems to be some idea floating around that what is going on there is something other than a religious dispute. It isn't something else. These protests aren't about doing away with the Islamic State, they're about the version of it that will run the place. It isn't a hell of a lot different than the Presbyterians going up against the Evangelicals - and yes it is about the same book in each case.

This rant isn't about religion, it is about theocracy. It is about organizations like the C Street creepy sex club and the rest of the Christian nation crowd. It is about the fundamental misunderstanding of the role of religion in America and its absolutely personal role. Every time one of these cretins sticks his head up it is time to ask them exactly why they want us to live in Iran.

Oh, yeah,Iran today.