Tea Nazi Rant.

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This is a rant. It is a rant about republicans and religion in general. It’s pretty heavy at the end. If you’re not in the mood to be depressed and/or pissed off, don’t read it. You have been warned.

Saying you believe in separation of church and state doesn’t make it okay to try and get the government involved in religion. Either the government can legislate religious issues or it can’t. Marriage is an institution of religion. If you think the government should be allowed to say anything about it, you don’t believe in separation of church and state. The end.

It’s okay to not want church and state to be separate. They’ve got religious government all over the middle east. Just look how happy everyone is. There’s no drinking, no gambling, no singing in public, no women without hats, no pornography and (best of all) NO FAGS!! Sounds like paradise to me. Christianity was a driving political force throughout the middle ages. Science was illegal and everybody was just so damn happy.That’s why there were so many crusades. People were just so happy and so excited to share the love of Christ that they went to the middle east and killed people (people who worshipped they same God they did) for worshipping a different God than they did.

The structure of the American government is based around the idea that religion and government in the same building is a bad idea. Don’t you dare say America was founded on Christian morals, or I’ll put you in jail for coveting your neighbor’s ass (the Old Testament will stop counting when you take it out of the “holy book.” But that’s a whole other topic).

But this is all ancillary to the big picture. The religious, conservative republican party is the same beast that every Christian political force before it has been: rich people trying to get richer by saying the right things to maintain their power base. That’s what religion is. Religion isn’t about God, and it’s not about salvation. Those are just the tools it most often uses to keep people under its thumb. It’s about money and it’s about power. I think no one understood the power of religion better than L. Ron Hubbard, who said: “I don’t want to make money writing science fiction. If I wanted to make money, I’d start a religion.”

One person doesn’t have a religion. One person has faith, and there’s nothing evil or insidious about that. There’s nothing wrong with believing in Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha (etc.), or even Xenu. Religion is a corporate stupidity. Religion is saying “I believe what you tell me because you’re smarter than me. Anybody who disagrees with you is wrong because I believe what you tell me.”

Here’s what I’m talking about: There are actual Christians out there who honestly believe that the Bible doesn’t contradict itself. You cannot have read very much of the Bible and still believe that. In one bit, God says “don’t kill anybody.” In another bit not too far away from that, God says “go over there and kill everybody. Yes, even the women and children.” He even sends an angel (or at least, a guy from out of town. And I’m not being glib: it’s genuinely unclear) to lead the charge. That’s just my favorite example. There are others as well.

“But the Bible is the word of God, so it can’t possibly contradict itself. You’re taking it out of context.” I thought that’s what the Bible was for: taking bits out of context and making them say whatever is convenient to make your point. That’s what every guy I’ve ever seen quote it on TV does. That’s why there’s so much of it: to discourage the common people from reading it so the priests can tell them what it says and what it means. For a while that didn’t happen as much as in the good ol’ days, but now we’ve come full circle.

That’s what the Nazi party was in the 1930’s, and that’s what the tea nazi party is today: religion. That’s why religious political movements are always (ALWAYS!) anti-education. The German nazis burned books, and so do the American ones. Because anyone who has a mind inquisitive enough to seek education knows they’re full of shit and sees that they’re just saying whatever they have to say to get and keep power. Just like Hitler. Hitler didn’t hate Jews. He didn’t hate anybody. He just needed an object to put the hate on, and Jews were convenient. They were everywhere, so anywhere he needed to go he could get people hating them. Just like the tea party (and the rest of American Christendom) is doing with anyone who doesn’t have a traditional sexual orientation (even those who’s physiology prohibits it).

And before someone calls me on it: I know there are Christians in America who aren’t total assholes. For every Christian I know who is a complete waste of genetic material, I know at least one who is worth their salt. But as long as you call yourself a Christian, you choose to allow bigots and hate-mongers to be your public voice. I base my judgements on what I see and hear. That’s all I can do. So you have to be just as loud as they are when you say “he doesn’t speak for me,” or nobody hears it, which is why people hate you for being a Christian, and why I had to stop doing it.

And it’s going to work. They’re going to win. The tea nazis are going to gain power, they are going to become a major force in the government, and the next world war is going to be everbody against us. But this time, it won’t be a nation trying to conquer its neighbors. It will be a new crusade (because we didn’t learn anything from the old ones) to conquer the world in the name of Jesus. It’ll be just like Command & Conquer. We’ll be Nod. I’ll put money on the fact that we’ll even wear red (you can’t be a Christian army and not wear some red. It’s the rules).

Why will this happen? Because half of us are too stupid to know any better and the other half don’t care enough to do anything about it. Just like nobody in Germany cared enough to stop Hitler before he rose to power, even though they knew it was likely togo wrong. They were all too excited about a re-ignited German nation to care about how they got there.

And just like the allied forces did to the citizens in the towns with concentration camps in them, whoever finally beats us is going to make us walk through the re-education centers where we sent all the atheists and all the gays. They’re going to line us up in front of the ditches where the bodies of all the people who were tortured to death or killed themselves because they couldn’t handle the torture any more are rotting because there are so many they can’t be buried or incinerated fast enough. They’re going to point their guns at us and make us look at all the death. And they’re going to say “you did this. This is your fault. You are as responsible for all of this as the men at the top because you let them do it.” All the stupids will have joined the army, so the only ones left to be marched through the camps will be those of us who know that it really is all our fault.

Am I really the only person who sees this? Am I crazy? Someone please convince me that I’m completely out of my mind and that history doesn’t really repeat itself like every history teacher who ever lived says it does. Someone show me how the tea party is different from the nazi party. Maybe all the news coverage just makes it feel like it’s a greater problem than it really is. And if I’m not wrong, what’s a guy to do? I don’t want this to happen. What can I do to make it not? Vote? Right. Because my vote counts. Run for office? Right. Because I could get the support of a major party or am independently wealthy enough to run my own political campaign. Pray? Oh, I do. And, as previously noted, my vote counts. So this is what keeps me up at night. How about you?