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Today, as I do most days, I appeased my addiction to National Public Radio before starting my morning commute. I was distraught when I heard that a decorated military officer named Boykin has been appointed to a crucial liason role in relation to the US appointed Iraqi governing council. According to the report, that included a tape recorded speech made by Boykin to a Baptist Church in Oklahoma, he believes that the War on Terror is a religious war declared by a "Christian" nation on a godless satanic muslim infidel. No, I am not exaggerating. He was quoted as using the name of "Satan" in his description of musilims who he threw in the same category with Osama and Sadam. He also was quoted claiming that his "god" is "real" and there's is "fake." No, he was not speaking of terrorists, but rather of Islam in general.

Boykin's beliefs are the very sort that make America less than its potential as wonderful utopian experiment in justice and peace. The Christian fundamentalists have always felt at home in the United States. They're message has changed in order to capture the anger of the moment but thier tactics have persisted probably because they work so well. Many of them believe that God is a white man who appointed the worlds resources to be divided unevenly in favor of white men. Many of these people, believe that race and religion distinctions of a kind. If you wear the wrong one, you belong in hell. These people believe that they are right. They are the same folks who perpetrated a holocaust on American Indians. They are the same who enslaved, lynched, and murdered black people. They have also justified state run terror campaigns within the US against blacks and outside the US against all sorts of other-mainly black and brown-people. But, do not mistake my tirade for naivte. Clearly Christian zealots have not been the only mean people on Earth. Just think for a moment about the Muslim zealots with whom they have been preoccupied lately. However, they have been among the most powerful mean people on Earth, and thier mean exploits have built them an extra special cache among the fearful American masses. No consevative politician would ever run a campaign without appealing to the zealots. Surely, if the Straussian philosophies of Wolfowitz and the other neo-cons-with its atheist philosopher kings-is to succeed, it will have to be dissolved like harsh medicine in a spoonful of Christian zealotry and zionism. This type of insular thinking powers a class of men who believe that swords, guns, and bombs will eventually weed the bad DNA from the human race. Such a Darwinist clean up will be bloody. The masses will not except this purge, unless they think that it is part of a morally justified battle on behalf on god, I mean God.

Perhaps, I am loosely interpreting. Perhaps I am putting words into the mouths of these folks. The point is, I feel fully radicalised. For a moment today, I felt that had more in common with any terrorist than with a Democratic US House member who would vote to give $87Billiion to the same defense department that awarded Halliburton (who still pay VP Dick Cheney) a non-competitive bid on Iraqi oil production. I have more in common with a stone throwing teenager in Gaza than I do with a government who would ship coke through Panama, in order to fund a right wing movement in Nicaragua. And then after they ship the coke, they spent millions on a campaign to get kids to "Just Say No." For a moment, I was ready to die in exchange for not having to live another day feeling that my silence was the cover for a covert war from which philosopher kings, religious zealots, and blood thirsty profiteers benefit at every turn, while humans suffer in ever more elaboratly degrading conditions accross a globe.

I feel completely radicalized. I am finished trying to understand conservatives.
To all of you who believe in the Christian God. To all of you who go to Churches. I ask you, no I beg you, to look at the ideas of your God, and the compare them with the actions of our government. I beg you to wonder how an entire Christian denomination responded to a gay Bishop in New Hampshire and compare to the Church's silence about Governor Schwarzenegger's groping and ganging up on women. To all of you who want to stop young women from aborting babies, do you have any time left over to help the 400 girls who were raped and murdered in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (a maquiladora just across the border of Texas were young women do factory work for incredibly low wages). To those of you who feel that welfare is a waste of your tax money where was your Church when the Reagan government bailed out the Bush family's failed, fraudulent S&L scheme costing American taxpayers $1.6 Billion.

Someone help me come back to reality. Someone show me why opening up with the other side is worth while. By no means do I claim that my "side" is right. In fact, I would say that the commitment to right and wrong is precisely the type of thinking that has sustained the sorts of injustice that charade as patriotism and Christianity. Intellectually, I am aware of the irony of aligning myself with murders. Terrorists on average are probably as mysogynist and hateful as anyone in Bush's cabinet. I will take personal responsability for my anger. I will not levy it onto some sort of abstract mythology that requires the blood of innocent people. However, my empathy has dried up for the right. I give not a flying fuck for that way of thinking.Politicians on the left don't even seem to get it any longer. I am daring my friends and anyone out there who reads this to change my mind.
P.S. check out < href="http://www.doorsofperception.com/weblog/details/117">James Kuenstler on Illusory Wealth