[Buddha-l] [Fwd: [skepnet] Documentaire: Jesus Camp (2006)]

[Richard Hayes]

On Thursday 05 July 2007 10:10, Joanna Kirkpatrick wrote:

> It's the US Christians' emulation of the Hitler Youth.
> We are definitely in the age of rising fascism

Alas, we're not. Fascism and National Socialism were both nationalistic and 
ethnocentric forms of socialism. American politics has eschewed the socialism 
and devolved into a nationalistic and xenophobic form of mean-spirited 
consumerism and greed.

I have a cousin (who happens to be on the Republican side of the family) who 
forwards me several political and social messages a day. Yesterday's message 
was a rant some American had written about how this entire country has gone 
completely to hell. (This sounded promising, so I continued reading.) The 
evidence for this decline was that the first option on many automated 
telephonic responding devices these days is choice of language. Giving people 
in America a choice of hearing a message in English or Spanish, argued the 
author, has completely eroded American values. (Apparently, one can feel true 
patriotism and stand for democracy only in English.) Allowing, even 
encouraging, people in the United States to hear messages in Spanish, the 
author went on, will inevitably lead to all the problems being experienced in 
the United Kingdom, where terrorist attacks launched immigrants and their 
offspring have all but demolished British society. The message ended by 
encouraging the recipient to send it to twenty other people "if you care 
about the future of America." For some goddamn reason, I deleted it and got 
busy trying to figure out how to clean barf off my keyboard. 

> No virus found in this outgoing message.

Now what's the point of sending a message that does not contain a virus? I 
think we should all send out messages filled with the contagious viruses of 
unconditional love for all sentient beings (especially for those 
semi-conscious troglodytes who use e-mail to spread their messages of hate 
and paranoia). 

Please wake me up when the Holy American Empire has fallen. I'll be out in the 
garden, sleeping under a pumpkin plant.

-- 
Richard