On this past Fourth of July I found myself thinking about the false prophets of freedom; the Glen Becks, Sarah Palins, Dick Armeys, John Boehners, Mitch McConnells, ad nauseum. These are the Bible waving, Constitution quoting - although not necessarily understanding - peddlers of a cheap salvation and an even cheaper liberty.
Like all false prophets before them these staggering idiot promise an easy way to live without the necessity of thought, taxes, or education. Subjugate your women, chain up your children, exploit the minority peoples and murder the gays. In other words, close the front door and back to the 1950’s.
Most of you who follow this Blog know that I am a proud and outspoken Pagan. As such I am unimpressed with the word evil and its common uses. Evil, like activist judge, currently means, "I don’t like you," or "You don’t agree with me." Therefore, the concept that evil is simply the word live spelled backward makes much more sense today. The backward thinking ideas of people like Beck, Palin, Armey, Boehner and McConnell work only to their elitist good and are completely destructive to the men and women of the working middle class who they are attempting to seduce to their cause and encourage to live in reverse. I am sure that they are fully aware of what they are doing. If that isn’t "evil" I don’t know what the hell is.
I have also come to believe that our persistent need to be told Fairytales is not just foolishness but another form of evil. It draws us back into a way of thinking that we have long outgrown. For instance, we can do away with public education so we don’t have to pay taxes and insist upon promoting "American Exceptionalism." We can live in the greatest nation in the world tax free and be safe in our person and property because our military and police will work for nothing. We can keep all of our toys - all of our money - and continue to enjoy the vast human resources of this country. That is to say enjoy, technology, medicine, clean streets, wholesome food, great universities, fire departments, first responders and it goes on and on. There are days when I want to stand on top of my house and scream, "Pull your head out of your ass and grow up!!!!"
False prophets serve no God and no country. They serve only themselves. The people drawn into their cause and sphere of influence are burned up like fuel and forgotten. To the extent that the media promotes, highlights or features a Beck, a Palin or any of the others the media lights the fire.
I have said and I believe that Democrats use money to take care of people. Republicans use people to take care of money. It follows then that the Glen Becks, Sarah Palins, Dick Armeys, John Boehners, and Mitch McConnells use both – with no distinction in value – to arrogantly and parasitically promote and take care of themselves. As the Bible of the Judeo-Christian tradition warns, "Beware of false prophets."
Recently I have heard some Christians attributing the corruption, greed, and deceit within their own ranks to Pagans - specifically Witches. This is BS in the first degree. Whether we follow the Rede or not we have absolutely no interest in distorting Christian values. It seems to me that many Christians are hell bend on doing it themselves.
This particular bit of scapegoating appears to hinge upon our practice of magick and its alleged infiltration into the Christian world. Let me be very clear, Pagans and Witches do not share their knowledge of magick or anything else for that matter with outsiders in an arbitrary and capricious way. There are some damn good reasons for this - the majority of them have to do with fire. Without our knowledge most people wouldn’t know magick if it flew up their butt on a Kaiser roll with mustard, ketchup, salt and pepper.
Christians have no monopoly on ethics or honor. Witches do not seduce or influence people against their will. We do not turn men and women into the Anti-Christ. We also don’t fly over houses on brooms grabbing Volkswagens and small children.
Those who subscribe to this asinine position might do the world a favor and take some responsibility for your own problems. That is the first thing a good therapist would tell them to do. They should find one.
Of all the roses I own this is my favorite. She is apricot and gold. A giant fancy bloom on a hybrid tea. She was hybridized in England in 1972. Parentage: Fragrant Cloud x Dr. A.J. Verhage. She has won the following awards: Royal National Rose Society James Mason Gold Medal 1986, Royal Horticultural Society Award Of Garden Merit 1993, Worlds Favorite Rose 1994. Awards won in England are far more prestigious than awards won in the United States. The British have been growing roses longer and better than anyone in the world. Enjoy.
The problem with Blanche Lincoln winning in Arkansas is that even though the people of her state are getting what they deserve, owing to the arcane rules of the Senate the rest of us are stuck with her too. Thus the next time she decides to take a leak on something the people want - like the Public Option - we all need a shower. Thank you Mr. President for putting politics ahead of the good of the working people.
I haven't had much time to be on line recently. The beginning of gardening season means mulching, pruning and manicuring gardens. As some of you know I have many gardens and over 30 roses. Considering the monstrous thing, the horrible affront to the Goddess and the Earth that is occurring in the Gulf I am working very hard to honor Her in my gardens.
The featured flower, purple and white, is the viola. She comes in many forms. If you plant her in pots one year you will find her volunteers scattered throughout your garden the next. Viola is winter hardy, and heat resistant to a point. If you plant her in direct sunlight she will stop blooming when it gets hot. She will be back when it cools down. Viola is sacred to the Goddess Hecate.
I have often wondered at the insanity of spending millions upon millions of dollars, not to mention millions of man hours, electing a president just so we can spend the next four to eight years driving the poor fool crazy. If he is kind and compassionate then he is weak and too emotional to be effective. If he is brilliant and coolly cerebral then he doesn’t care about people and the great issues of his day.
The other morning I heard Joe Scarborough - not one of my favorite people - expounding upon the fact that Obama isn’t good at symbolism. I had no idea that we needed an Ingmar Bergman in the White House. Also that morning I heard Anne Kornblum of the Times who seemed to imply that since the oil spill in the Gulf could not be stopped by Obama’s rhetoric this proved the limits of Obama’s talent. She must be delusional. No president has ever had the kind of power and control needed to stop an oil plume from pumping out of a badly maintained pipe deep in the ocean with or without rhetoric. If they had Congress would soon take it away from them in its infinite need to urinate on the Executive Branch’s parade.
Nonsense like this proves to me that one of the most corrosive elements in our body politic is the mainstream media. They promote the torture of presidents with cruelty, depravity, stupidity and speculation leading to guilt by association - all of which validates in the electorate a profound confusion, a dance of lunacy, a paranoid schizophrenic’s wet dream.
The 24/7 news cycle produces legions of news performers and precious little else. Their performance de jour often bleeds over into the print media. Thus, people like Kornblum engage in the theatrics and optics necessary to float with the other crap in the toilet. In my opinion these commentators and talking heads aren’t reporters or journalists. They are pseudo intellectuals impersonating experts in order to grind a political axe. Believe them, follow them too closely at your own risk.
Presidents like other societal victims often own a part of their victimization. Obama for instance is brilliant without question, beautifully eloquent and cares deeply for someone - although, I am not always sure who. Nonetheless, he persists with the tenaciousness of an angry teenager in impersonating Gandhi when he ought to try on a little Lucky Luciano.
From December 9, 1946 to August 20,1947, in the American sector of Germany at a place called Nuremberg, a legal proceeding known to history as the Doctor’s Trial convened. United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al, as it was officially captioned was a war crimes trial during which many Nazi doctors and SS officers were accused of conducting or facilitating some of the most egregious and horrifying medical experimentation in history.
At the end of the presentation of evidence and during sentencing the American Judges Beals, Sebring, Crawford and Swearingen laid out their opinions in such a cogent and compassionate way as to create a foundation for modern medical bioethics. At the core of their judgment, as it does at the heart of modern medical practice, sits the tenet of informed patient consent. A patient must be told what is wrong, what can be done, who will do it and what if any good they can expect to experience. They also have the right to refuse any treatment or testing. This is not negotiable. It hasn’t been for a very long time.
Let it be known that the State of Oklahoma has decided to set aside all of this when it comes to women and their pregnancies. In HB2656 the State House of Representatives decreed that it is perfectly acceptable for a physician to lie to a patient carrying a child suffering from birth defects so that she can’t make the choice to terminate. They also overrode a veto by their Governor, Brad Henry, of another grotesque law HB2780 insisting that a woman view an ultrasound of her fetus prior to having an abortion. The Senate concurred.
I haven’t the words to express my anger right now. Suffice it to say that most of us who have spent years honoring the craft of medicine are not likely to take ethical instruction from sleazy politician, two-for-a-penny John the Baptists drumming up votes. Yet, some practitioners will certainly take the law as license to shove their religion down their patient’s throat; Goddess help our sisters in Oklahoma.
To force a woman to look at a child she is terminating is almost as scandalous as some of the evidence in the Doctor’s Trail. Anyone who thinks that women have abortions without thinking or feeling or grieving is too bloody stupid to live. I had an abortion thirty years ago. I had no choice. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think, feel or grieve for that child. That is my burden to bear, and I will be damned if some governmental appendage will define or deny it now based upon a religion I don’t follow. In point of fact, they may not follow it either when it comes time to aid in the care of a child born with a serious birth defect to an unknowing mother.
There is a great authority in the Bible for misogyny and cruelty to women. There is also a great tendency in these God fearing, freedom loving, Constitution worshiping states like Oklahoma to conveniently forget that the right to a safe legal abortion is as much the law of the land as the right to bear arms. When you put religious authority together with selective application of the law you end up with a bunch of hooligans, bullies, who would never consider treating men the way they treat women and might not treat their women the way they treat strangers.
My Irish grandmother, who trained me in the Celtic Witchcraft, used to say, "If men had to have babies abortion would have been a foregone conclusion in the time of Christ. If men had to have every other child in a family there would only be one." Woman gave birth to the race of men. Our bodies belong to us. Our sons need to step aside.
