Sam’s Unholy Political War

Unless you live in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, or Wisconsin, you cannot hear the chanting. That’s because of the noisy sideshow going on in Washington, D.C. Even good reporters, like the Globe and Mail’s Konrad Yakabuski, believe the sideshow is the main attraction. The true centre of American politics, he’s been told, is the “culture war” fueled by the tea party’s hidden conservative social agenda. The tea party, Yakabuski tells us, claims to promote fiscal conservatism as its sole agenda item, when in fact it is using the budget battle as a ruse, allowing it to ram through Congress a socially conservative agenda, led by an attempt to defund non-profit agencies that offer abortion services. This was the gist of Mr. Yakabuski’s article yesterday. I have to disagree with his report. The main attraction is not the tea party in Washington. The real news—which even the Globe and Mail is not covering—is the attempt to forever destroy the political underpinnings of the United States. The war is cultural, but it is most of all economic and political. That is what people—good people—are chanting about, and trying to bring to our attention, in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. But no one, except Rachel Maddow’s and Michael Moore’s followers, is listening.

The particulars of the budget debate have no relevance to anything that is actually transpiring. Evil beasts have clamped their iron jaws around the necks of Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, cutting off the jugular. The purpose of the noise in Washington is to divert attention from the beasts in the Midwest, to give them enough time to force the states to pass out from suffocation. At some point, the unsavory Obergruppenführers leading this unholy war know the people of Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio will lose patience, vacation time, and resolve, go home, and allow the beasts to consume the dead carcasses of their once noble states. The evil that spreads across the Midwest is the devilish attempt to destroy the Democratic Party, and any progressive organization that has the ability to organize and raise money. It is a coup d’état, in progress.

The war began on January 21, 2010. It was on that day that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that regulating corporate campaign contributions constituted illegal restraint of free speech. Private entities of any kind in the United States are now free to spend without limit to support candidates and political causes. The ruling was surprising to most court watchers because it constituted a 180-degree turn from previous rulings over several decades. The common wisdom of the 20^th century, reflected in one court decision after another, was that free speech would be harmed if wealthy and powerful corporations could control political debate by purchasing advertising space that might have been allocated to opposing political views. Thanks to the present ruling, you can turn on the radio or the television and hear a constant barrage of conservative political advertisements in the days before an election. You will not hear liberal or Democratic political advertisements because all of the air time has been purchased by the better-funded conservative candidates. This monopolization of the public forum by conservative voices now has the official blessing of the United States Government.

Only one cluster of entities has any ability to stand in the way of the complete control of all advertising media. Killing these organizations is what this unholy war is all about. It’s what the people are chanting about in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. The only entities that have the power to afford expensive political advertising are the unions. Conservative legislatures and governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio have passed laws or are attempting to pass laws that take away the long-held right of public workers to engage in collective bargaining. In effect, these legislatures are removing unions’ primary reason for existence. Without collective bargaining, there are no unions. More importantly to the Obergruppenführers and their evil ditto-head tea party followers, once the unions are destroyed there will be no liberal-leaning organizations remaining that can prevent social and fiscal conservatives from ruling the airwaves in the United States. Henceforth, only the conservative message will be heard in the United States. It is a coup d’état, but only those who cannot afford food or health care coverage will die. The rich and powerful will suffer only a small loss in wealth to pay for the political advertising that will ensure their selfish existence.

It is a cultural, political, economic war led by capitalists and other selfish people, including the heretics who falsely call themselves conservative Christians. Those who seek to hoard mammon are not Christians at all. They are the most vile of heretics, blasphemers, and unholy filth. They would have you believe that their selfishness is somehow validated in their King James and NIV Bibles. Deep down, some of them actually believe that in worshiping money they are actually showing “stewardship” and following the commandments of Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who believes the Gospel says poor people should die due to lack of food, clothing, shelter, or medical care is delusional. Anyone who preaches this from the pulpit or talks about it in books or on radio or television is a heretic and is preaching blasphemy. And anyone who cultivates any such lifestyle is going to burn forever in hell.

The Gospel is about sharing with those in need, loving thy neighbor as thyself, giving food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, shelter to the homeless, hope to those in prison. It’s never been about selfish hoarding of money. You can only serve one master: God or mammon. Those who deny their neighbors’ needs are serving mammon. Their selfishness should be rendered illegal. Their selfishness cannot exist in a truly civilized environment, because selfishness is antithetical to the very foundations of civilization. Their selfishness does not exist in heaven, because heaven is the place where all are cared for. That is to say, people such as these cannot exist in heaven. By their own choice they will burn in hell. They took Pascal’s Wager, decided there was no God (no law of the universe that says people need to be treated as the Image of God), and decided to live a life of hedonistic abandon.

The chanting coming out of Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio is the song of those who stand to lose their medical insurance, and therefore their homes and their livelihoods, if the Obergruppenführers and other brutes and conservative thugs get their way. Once the conservative agenda is promulgated into law, once every branch of government is forever in the hands of the Obergruppenführers and their ilk, only the poor will pay taxes. Nowadays we call it sales tax. Someone has to pay for roads and the military. A 15% tax on food will take care of that. Income tax? No such thing. The government will still have something called income tax, but its sole purpose will be to refund to the wealthy the small amount of sales tax they had to pay. Some way will be found to discriminate between rich and poor. Perhaps a monthly purchase of champagne or caviar will trigger a sales tax refund. It will be something interesting and creative. Medical insurance? Sure, but only if you can pay several times more than you’re paying now. Pre-existing conditions? If you can afford to pay $25,000 a year the pre-existing conditions clauses will be removed from every contract. And if you can’t afford that? Well, before you die of the cancer that is ravaging your body, you’ll need to legally disown your children. Otherwise, after you die of the disease that doctors refused to treat because you could not pay, the Obergruppenführers’ debt collectors will force your children to pay, long after your body has been rotting in its grave.

This is the ugliest war ever fought in the United States. I join my voice to those chanting. Take away my collective bargaining rights. Take away my voice from the airwaves. Take away my medical insurance. Take away my home, my job, my way of life. But you cannot take away what I believe, even if you manage to kill me. I believe every person on this Earth has a right to live, a right to food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education. And even if you oppose me, even if you assert the truth of every blasphemous lie, even if you spit in the face of Christ and laugh at Him and nail Him to the cross, I continue to believe that there is some bit of the divine hidden behind your evil, that somewhere inside you carry the divine spark, that you can, if you allow yourself, show compassion to your neighbor. Whether we like it or not, all of us are the very Image of God. I embrace that truth. That’s why I’m chanting. You may take away everything from me, but you will not win. My children and my neighbor’s children will have to be destroyed, too, if you wish to rule the world. Eventually you will lose. Eventually God will prevail against you and the other Obergruppenführers. And our chanting will fill the airwaves.

PM
April 10, 2011