The Obfuscation Report

"By their fruits shall ye know them."

"For I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat:
I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in:
naked, and ye clothed me not:
sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying,
Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or thirsty,
or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison,
and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying,
Verily I say unto you,
ye did it not to me."

This is an irrefutable fact: the vast, VAST majority of elected politicians in this country call themselves Christians. Especially, it seems, the Republicans, and their putative leaders: George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist.

"Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."

"Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commandments are pegs; everything in God's law and the Prophets hangs from them."

These self-declared "Christians" are LIARS. Their platitudes and photo opportunities and exclamations of concern for the poor, the suffering, the displaced and the disenfranchised are LIES. Judge them not by their words, but by their actions. By their ACTIONS, they expose themselves as hypocrites, thieves and LIARS.

It is NOT ENOUGH to come upon the scene of devastation and bemoan the loss of life and property. The legislation, policies and deregulation that Republicans have espoused and worked toward installing in this country are the foundation of disasters like the aftermath of Katrina. THEY and their political philosophies are the reason there are so many poor people in this country, that there were so many people doomed in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

But the beauty of it, in their shrewd and mendacious view, is that very few of their constituents can recognise the bald-faced truth: it is the racism of centuries, the decades of greed enabled by political actions and the depraved indifference to the laws of their purported Saviour that brought us to this place and time.

What we face, in the Republicans of today, is a huge group of people who are either so blinded by their insular, privileged existence or so venal in their depraved indifference to the common good that they have spent their lives actively contradicting virtually every dictum of Jesus Christ. These Republicans are LIARS when they claim to be Christians, whether or not they know it.

The charitable view is that they are terribly ignorant and so gone astray that they know not what they do. More likely, I fear, is that they know exactly what they have done and are doing - and they DO. NOT. CARE. They pay lip service to Christianity because it is the fastest route toward legitimacy in this country as a politician. But if they actually believe in Jesus Christ and his teachings, it is inconceivable that they should so consistently behave as they do.

Each piece of legislation, each reprehensible act of eradicating protection of the vulnerable and constructing easier paths for their "own kind" - that is to say, the wealthy, the corporate, the invulnerable, the privileged - fairly reeks of hypocrisy and sin, in the lexicon of Christianity - and mere human decency.

The wealthy and privileged of the world - and that includes most of the powerful Republicans in this country - either never learned or have forgotten a simple truth:

But for the grace of god, there go I.

In other, less ecclesiastical words, it is sheer LUCK that one is born into wealth, privilege and power. Sheer fucking LUCK that one zygote landed into a rich white family in Philadelphia and another in a poor black family in New Orleans. And for the vast majority of the wealthy and the privileged and the powerful, any claim of entitlement solely by virtue of birth is as absurd as taking credit for one's physical beauty. It was CHANCE that brought you to your existence and not that of a baby born with AIDS in a war-torn refugee camp in Somalia.

And if you believe, as many wealthy, powerful people seem to believe, that GOD put you where you are, that GOD determined that your human existence should be one of privilege and virtual invulnerability to the trials and tribulations of most others' experience of human existence, then you are REQUIRED, by your own declared religious beliefs, to remember this fact:

But for the grace of GOD, there go I.

For the most part, if you're living in America and you're rich and healthy, it was mostly about CHANCE - or, if you like, God's grace. You CHANCED to be born American, white, healthy, intelligent, with good parents.

By CHANCE or God's grace, you are someone who has managed not to be gravely injured in a car accident or natural disaster and then dependent on the largesse of the state and individual charity for your survival.

By CHANCE or God's grace, you are nurtured in your chosen field, given the right opportunities to succeed, advanced in the right company and not laid off or outsourced.

By CHANCE or God's grace, you have healthy children whose medical needs (let alone education) do not bankrupt you.

By CHANCE or God's grace, you were not born poor and black in Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama.

It's ALL luck. There are millions of people who, through no fault of their own, live in poverty, disease, unemployment and a myriad of other desperate circumstances who, through no fault of their own, they have no way to pull themselves up out of by their "bootstraps." Millions of people, in fact, who don't have BOOTS.

THESE PEOPLE ARE OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE EYES OF THE GOD IN WHICH MOST REPUBLICANS CLAIM TO BELIEVE.

"Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commandments are pegs; everything in God's law and the Prophets hangs from them."

"By their fruits shall ye know them"

Ah, yes. We judge the actions, not the words. We see these Republicans standing before America, claiming to be Christians, claiming to believe the teachings of Jesus Christ.

And we also see them doing everything in their considerable power to subvert the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Christians, my ASS, you hypocritical, appalling, despicable, criminal LIARS.

As for George's war -- "THOU SHALT NOT KILL."

As for George's love of the death penalty -- "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

As for the reprehensible Republican vilification of gays: "LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF."

I could go on, but I am developing a migraine contemplating the UNCONSCIONABLE HYPOCRISY espoused in virtually every tenet of the Republican, right wing, "conservative," so-called "Christian" mindset in REPUBLICAN AMERICA.

SHAME ON YOU, REPUBLICANS.

You may now return to the business of stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. I see you have on your schedule the permanent repeal of the Estate Tax; wouldn't want to slow you down in your seemingly inexorable march toward a welfare state, a return to feudalism. Might want to take a look at gutting Social Security and Medicare, while you're at it; hell, you have all the power - might as well make use of it, right? What's the point of being rich and powerful if you can't use it to get MORE rich and powerful?

Fucking assholes.