83. HOSTILE TAKEOVER

From the Archives

(April 2005) Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks are filled with one sentence, repeated again and again. Scholars believe that he wrote it whenever he was testing a newly cut pen:

Tell me, tell me if anything got finished.

That sentence summarizes how this semester has been going of late. (sigh)

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about this whole hostile takeover by the Christian jihadists who attack our judicial system and democracy with the stated goal of turning us into the theocracy they believe we once were. Frist's whole so-called Justice Sunday is so obscene and churches that participate and preach that Christians must only support the GOP party should have their tax-exempt status rescinded.

The fundies pepper their sentences with references to so-called liberal judges in an effort to colorcoat their own efforts to place extremists on the bench (which they seem to be succeeding in doing on Bush’s watch ... and the Supreme Court's mak-up by the end of his term is a scary thing to ponder).

In some ways, the fundies remind me of objectivists—only they actually believe that their ethics of self-interest is divinely guided.

(I'll write more on that in a bit because I must ponder this idea for a few more days while zoning out on the elliptical cross-trainer.)

Meanwhile, I am brain-dead and bone tired and have been flipping channels again instead of doing meaningful work.

Tonight, the CMT network is showing a special about Abbeville SC and the scary League of the South. If a war breaks out, we’re in a much better place than they are because we’ve got the good old boys with all the firearms, a good old boy just said.

He is involved with a group that wants to bring about a new civil war that will happen in the next twenty years, he says, because the US government is corrupt and they intend to take their county back.

(Um which country is that? I’d like to ask. The one that was founded by um deists?)

(Read any good history books lately?)

I've met my share of good old boys and can tell you that many of them are armed to the teeth. Many also have hearts of gold and are not as stupid as most would like to believe and very, very many of them have giant chips on their shoulders (sometimes for good reason). I've also met my share of one who are willing to die for their principles (even if these principles are defined by others).

In this particular television show, anti-government sentiment reaches its pinnacle when a family from New Hampshire (live free or die, dude) that has relocated to South Carolina (because these folks are the most like us) object to the government taking less than feet of its land in order to widen a highway, so the family stages a shootout and actually kill a couple of cops over the grass around their mailbox.

Remind me to send in my renewal payment to the Southern Poverty Law Center.