Eight-Hundred-Pound Gorillas #1, 2 & 3

Another sort of post you will see semi-frequently on this Blog will be my regular attempts to point out the obvious. Sometimes (like today) they will be Eight-Hundred-Pound Gorillas, and others, they will be Naked Emperors. As I'd rather think about great, big gorillas than about naked men of any societal station, this is the one with which I'll start.

We'll never beat 'em by joining 'em. We can never win our glorious war on terror by becoming like the very terrorists we're trying to defeat. They see it as a glorious war against us, and we have been suckered into accepting their mentality as the truth. These people do not deserve to be seen as simply one of two opposing forces. This places them on an equal footing with us, and it's an insult to America. These people are thugs and criminals, while we are (or at least are supposed to be) law-abiding and decent human beings.

Let's never forget that, even when our leaders do.

The pom-pom girls stay on the sidelines so they won't get tackled. They rah-rah all the carnage on the field, all the while staying as far out of the way of it as possible. I cannot stress this enough, as so many people are trying to gloss over it. It isn't just an eight-hundred-pound gorilla; it's a sixteen-hundred-pound hippo. The Right-Wing slackers tell us this is not a valid argument. But no matter how many times they keep on repeating that, they still can't make the hippo disappear.

D'you remember that movie, A League Of Their Own? All those pretty girls playing kickass baseball? Remember why those gals got such a great chance at sports glory, fifty years before the WNBA? It was because all the men who possibly could serve their country in the military -- even the big-league baseball stars -- were in uniform doing their duty. We applaud Pat Tillman for having had the unselfishness to leave a mega-million-dollar football career to serve in Afghanistan (and well we should), but why the hell is it considered such an oddity, anymore, to see a young man give the prime of his life to the country he loves?

I'm gonna say it straight. If you truly believe that this war is a holy and glorious cause for truth, justice and the American way, if you are sincere when you claim that we're in a battle-to-the-death against an evil force that's hell-bent on taking over the world, but you are not either in uniform or doing everything you can to get into one, then you are either a liar, a coward or both.

My father was too young for World War II. He was still a high-schooler when it was over. But did he say, "Whew...dodged that bullet! Time to party hearty?" No, he enlisted in the Army and served his country honorably as a military policeman in occupied Japan. And he was a hundred times the man your average young neocon joystick jockey will ever be.

I do believe that women should serve in the military, too, and I don't believe in the draft for anybody (it's still unconstitutional -- not that such a technicality seems to matter much anymore). I also have the utmost respect for conscientious objectors and for people who, in general, stay out of military service because they don't believe the war du jour is just. But all the strutting and preening (not to mention the name-calling) by these Captain-Rock-Ribs, God-is-a-Republican types is just disgusting. They're a lot of slacking, shirking, stay-at-home good-for-nothings, they're making total assclowns of themselves, and it's about time somebody exercised some tough love and told 'em so.

There are liberal Christians, too. If I have to listen to one more secularist Left-Wing politician either (A) pander to "the center" by trying to appease bigots or (B) diss every Christian on the face of the earth by lumping us all together with the wingnuts on the Religious Right, I truly believe that I shall scream.

THERE. ARE. LIBERAL. CHRISTIANS. TOO. Get that through your thick gourds, boys and girls. It will by no means please every Christian voter in America if you vote for an amendment to the Constitution that would not only ban gay marriage, but destroy the integrity of the entire document by violating four existing amendments. Nor do even very many of us believe that the earth is flat, or that Santa brought Adam and Eve to earth in his sleigh. Some of us -- gasp with shock!!! -- even believe that God created not only Adam and Steve, but also Stephanie and Eve.

I don't approve of having a mass murderer and war criminal for President. Nor do I think Jesus would approve of anybody torturing anybody. And at the sad spectacle of the Catholic Church shielding child-molesters (and even enabling them to go on groping and raping!) -- all the while slandering innocent gays and lesbians -- I am sure God must weep.

Stop saying "Christians" -- meaning ALL Christians -- when truth would be better served if you said "certain Christians on the Religious Right." There may even be a hell of a lot of them, but that does not justify perpetuating the falsehood that they're the only game in town.

A lie doesn't become the truth, no matter how many times you repeat it. And neither eight-hundred-pound gorillas nor sixteen-hundred-pound hippos (nor, sadly, even naked emperors) have a habit of going away simply because a lot of folks are doggedly determined to ignore them. Many little kids enjoy covering their eyes and pretending things they don't want to see have magically vanished. Some of us eventually outgrow such tomfoolery, but evidently a whole heckuva lot of people don't.