Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: the toilet is half empty

I see a lot of crap about how atheists are narrow-minded and intolerant of religion and distort the Constitution. Maybe some are and do, but for sheer nuttiness, stupidity and delusion, any aberrations from the usual behavior of the godless can't hold a candle to the faithful. The Sunday before the last minute holiday shopping is a good time for some levity. I suppose it depends a little on your sense of humor whether you think some of this utter, complete, total and idiotic nonsense is levity or not, but I'm an optimist. The toilet is half empty rather than half full:

The recent furor over U.S. Rep.-elect Keith Ellison's plans to use the Quran instead of the Bible is another in a series of decades-long attacks on America's biblical, Judeo-Christian roots. Those roots informed the political traditions that are the hallmark of America's Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the 1783 Treaty of Paris between the Americans and the British that legally established our independence begins with the words, "In the Name of the most Holy, and undivided, Trinity," and all three of these documents end with the phrase "in the year of our Lord," a direct reference to the deity of Jesus Christ!

. . . the Founding Fathers used the Bible's understanding of the sinfulness and fallibility of all men to create political doctrines established by our Constitution. Thus, the constitutional doctrines of balance of powers, separation of powers, enumeration of powers, and limited powers reflect the real fear that the founders had in vesting too much power in the hands of one sinful person or one group of sinful people.

[snip]

In effect, therefore, the political structure in the United States is controlled neither by the Republican Party nor the Democrat Party. It is, in reality, controlled by the mass media, especially Hollywood.

Even Christians are influenced by Hollywood, because it is Hollywood that has spent 50 years or more persuading children to accept sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, adultery, atheism, violence as a means of solving problems and, last but not least, big government handouts for every conceivable social ill under the sun.

In fact, the socialist tyranny in which we now apparently live (especially here in California) has spent trillions of dollars on public schools that do little to teach children about traditional values while indoctrinating them with humanist and atheist values.(WorldNet Daily)

What is newsworthy about this insane screed is the indication of how disillusioned the extreme Right has become with the Republican party and the opportunists who successfully fooled them into thinking they were both on the side of the Good and Righteous.

It no longer makes any sense, therefore, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political campaigns. Instead, conservatives and traditionalists, including committed Christians and Jews, should concentrate more of their money and time on redeeming the values of the mass media, especially film and television.

[snip]

But, we are losing [the] hearts and minds [of young people] to the influences of the entertainment industry, and that's where we need to focus our efforts.

[snip]

It's the mass media that we should be focusing upon in our efforts to save our political system from moral and cultural destruction. Because it's the mass media that creates the culture that elects the politicians who appoint the judges who rule our courts and who hire the teachers who instruct our children.

Many of us are also dismayed by the sorry quality of our mass media, but for different reasons. Little I see promotes atheism, so much the pity. It does promote violence, war and consumerism. More to the point, though, is the apparent realization by the far Right that the distorted propaganda on Fox Newsnothwithsatnding, the influence of the Fox Entertainment network is a hundred times more powerful. Religious fundamentalists, whether they call themselves Christian funadmentalists, Taliban, the settler movement in Israel, Islamists or Opus Dei are a reaction against the overwhelming power of popular culture and modernism. It's a losing battle.

The mass media are both formers and products of that culture. Whether to call it a secular culture is a matter of taste. There is more promotion of religion in that culture than I would like or think good, but it is a fact. There is no War on Christmas, but one could make a good case there is a war on atheism and secularism (which are not identical, but that never bothered the far right).

So read the inane sputterings of these nutcases for what they are. Evidence that the toilet is half empty.