Holy crap

Every time I take a small break from politics, my re-entry seems like a Polar Bear Club plunge into a frosty lake in January. I swear I’m better off just staying in so I’m used to it and the shock doesn’t threaten cardiac arrest.

I had a lovely weekend playing with friends and family, giving my news frenzied brain a nap and finally working instead on my atrophying muscles normally dormant during long stints at a desk behind a computer. I’m starting to understand those annoyingly happy, vapid “I’m not into politics” people who jog. Yes, ignorance is bliss. See? I’m still putting off getting to the politics with two inane introductions that haven’t come close to the point.

Fine. I’ll just spew out the top three that rudely woke me from my pleasant political slumber: TX Supreme Court thinks exorcism is A-OK. Craig and Vitter co-sponsor Marriage Protection Act. Obama veers right, waaaaay right. I had been sucking up my disagreement and disappointment on FISA, NAFTA (depending on the day), and the death penalty but but but, wha?? Faith-Based Initiatives?? Are you kidding me?

And there’s the zero degree, ball shrinking, nipple petrifying, lung collapsing final descent into brain death plunge.

I know you’re trying to beat a Muslim rap, but I thought Rev. Wright pretty much sealed that deal. I know the bottom line is you’re a politician trying to appeal to “one America” and gently coax those scared, snarling animals who call themselves Evangelicals out of the corner they put themselves in, but you’ve gone too far, Dr. Dolittle.

Advertising “America: Now with 10% more Theocracy!” ain’t gonna throw you over the top in the general election. You might get a small percentage of the Bible Belters crossing over to you, but unless you start tossing out anti-choice and anti-gay and creationism and school prayer sound bites, you are not growing any kind of new base. You’re just hacking away at the one you already had.

I really do understand the need to play to middle, as I am the middle in many respects, but you missed your Middletown exit here and veered way off course. You know damn well that the government has no business paying churches to help clean up our problems. Don’t give me that patronizing, “all hands on deck,” and “we won’t ‘allow’ them to proselytize or discriminate” BS either. First, it’s impossible or costly at best, to regulate. Second, you’re a liberal, right? At least still a Democrat? Then why so shy about using taxpayer money to fund the previously successful programs that were gutted for Faith-Based Initiatives? Please explain how adding churches to government programs and monitoring them is less bureaucratic and more effective and noncontroversial than simply working with current non-religious federal, state, and local programs.

Faith-base initiatives are a good way to buy votes, though. I’ll give you that. Promising money to churches and religious organizations who have incredible power over their congregations is a great inroad. Oh yeah, they’re not “allowed” to influence people’s votes. Silly me for thinking they do anyway.

Ultimately, it is a dangerous enmeshment of Church and State. Government pays churches to help people. Churches don’t have to proselytize to gain loyalty. The help is inherent proselytizing. It’s also a clear message that MORAL = RELIGIOUS and that only religious institutions care about helping people. Way to embolden the small percentage of anti-constitutionalists who are just aching to “dispel the myth of separation of church and state.” Why not just let them cover public school textbooks with the Ten Commandments and erect crosses on our courthouse squares right now and get it over with already. I’m looking forward to the ensuing Christian America Holy War over whose brand to follow. My money’s on the Mormons. Nothing screams patriotism better than your own domestic Jesus.