Hurry Up, Rapture

By Number Six

Sunday, April 16, 2006 at 07:23 AM

Those who know me personally, those who know me by my rants know full well: Living in a red state has its pitfalls....

It's never been easy. Born into a southern Baptist family, and yet, owning a mind donated by Vulcans. You get the idea: Unless it comes armed with Aristotlian logic, up yours, thanks.

Of course, I'm anti-religion, well, most of them, especially the literalist variety that come equipped with rules that defy quantum (7 days does not equal 14.2 billion years), sex (I own a penis for a logical reason, so I can make reproductions, duh!), food (lean pork, like tenderloin, is low in cholesterol), I mean, shit, the list of no-no's goes on further than a Fibonacci sequence. Sorry, as far as I am concerned, women are legitimate humans in their own right (fuck you, fundie Islam!), children are most precious, and we are to tend well this little ball of blue (sideways, motherfucking American Taliban!).

The more religious some are, the more they worry me.

Some are okay, tame, so to speak, not all that bad. I liken a lot of them to being fellow mystics; we agree there is a God, but the rules imposed so far are like turn signals on a roller coaster. So far, I've not been visited by apparitions or wild dreams, so, not to worry, I am not forming a cult anytime soon. Put money on it.

It's the wild ones that worry me no end. Unfortunately for those who own real brains, do not care for insipid rules, and wish to be left the fuck alone, well, it's like listening to an AM radio tuned slightly off-station, it slowly gets to you. Even more unfortunately, due to manipulation, lying, cheating, whatever, these assholes now own serious political power.

And, yes, they're serious about being fucking crazy.

One case in point is a neighbor lady, she's pretty tame, until she opens her mouth about, yep, the Old King James. I nod, ignore most of it and continue painting the house.

"You know, Bush is the antichrist?"

That throws me a parsec at warp 9.

"How so?"

This puzzles me, of course, Bush is supposed to be the poster child for the Religious Rant/Right, those asses who think America would be better off as Iran Lite, true? Who want to outlaw everything imaginable? Like free speech? Abortion? Gays? Me?

She tells me: He is the fourth horseman of the coming end of time, Daniel's "horn" who "was given power to speak blasphemies."

As a child, such stuff was part of the reason why I took flight and away from Christianity: To a little boy, Revelation and the other doom shit gave me nightmares. Stephen King-grade. Rod Serling-grade. Joseph Stefano (The Outer Limits)-grade. Cold sweats puking nightmares.

I'd known for many years, the "doomsday" stuff was part of the selling mechanism for Christianity, well, let's be specific here, Literalist Christianity, not the Gnostic kind that's more like Zen. When Constantine and his breed of stooges sat down and warped the beauty of Gnosticism into, well, the prejudicial Pharisitical crap we've endured for 1300 years, well, they made sure the congregation stayed afraid: Either accept this or risk the fires of Hell.

It also made arguing with the fundies like sanding water, about impossible. Anything contrary to the dogma automatically ends "YOU'LL BURN IN HELL SAYING THAT!" And I'd come back like Spock: "As the bullets are not real, they cannot harm me. Please go away and take your fear with you."

Older now, it's this rapture stuff I hear coming at me at more angles than there are degrees in a circle. You name the person, they read the news, watch Fox, oh, yeah, baby, they read those hideous Left Behind books and they are so fucking ready for the moment of teleportation to take place; they will be warped out before this "tribulation" takes place.

I feel sorry for them, like I felt so sorry for the victims of Jonestown, of Heaven's Gate, of Waco: The world will end one day, but it's a good ways off, unless an asteroid/meteor comes in hard; unless our sun runs cold sooner than calculated; or unless we play Global All-Out Nuke-the-fuck-out-everything War. History has many footnotes, tons of them, of cults that waited for the end to come, and gee, it never did.

Okay, unless you count sipping a beverage laced with K-C-N. (Potassium cyanide)

I feel for them, really, but I'm damned worried: One of their breed commands the codes, the special codes that send B-52's over the poles, that send submarines into silent running as keys are produced, as silo doors open and Titan III's warm. It can happen, like King's The Dead Zone, and in many ways, Bush is like that character from the novel: He's a fucking crazy fucker.

Bush is of the ilk that believes the poor interpretations that trigger those silly novels as penned by those like Hal Lindsay, and those two who penned those Left Behind books, they really want it to happen.

Armageddon, as many claim, will start with someone attempting to invade or destroy Israel. It's an almost given if the US decides to take out Iran. Some are already saying "World War Three is underway, it's just not to full throttle just yet."

And I said, as far back as 1970: "Unless Israel can make a peace with her neighbors, the middle east will always resemble a war zone." Israel, with their peristant "you hit me, I'll fucking break your head!" attitude has, sadly, festered a lot of anger, and it shows little signs of slowing, let alone, stopping.

And yes, the US supports Israel, which means we automatically get the gag prize: The US is so hated now, and it gets worse daily. The BS in Iraq just made it much, much, much worse.

And yet, we all sit around wondering, as Mix has, as others have, when does this psychotic dry drunk backsliding maniac push the button? When do we decide to invade or bomb Iran? Worse, what will it do afterwards?

Using the bunker-busters? A cloud of radioactive particles that will drift east, poisoning Afghanistan, Pakistan, India. That'll make us some new fans. And as many military minds warn: The civil war in Iraq could spread like a fire on a floor of gasoline, it takes little to fan flames already that hot.

As you might have guessed, arguing this with any of the American Taliban is so pointless: They welcome it. They're ready to beam out. They want the world to end and soon, as their fantasy dictates.

And I? "Mind that you wish for, it may well happen" goes a very old proverb. Wish for a rapture? Might as well wish for the sun to go nova instead: Nobody would live through that.

And what worries me most? It will happen, all the same. Bush will drop ordinance on Iran, we will sit back and be horrified, many of us will weep. Our fundie friends? They'll ejaculate. Islam is of Satan, they tell me again and again, a religion that will die, one day, when Jay-sus comes back to evaporate spacetime.

And, long from now, when it's all over, when peace returns, providing we're left alive, and this crap never happens of this rapture, I will be too angry, too tired and too sick to tell them "I fucking told you so."

It's childish to believe in a fairy tale, but pure suicide to attempt to make it come true. I just pray and pray hard, I hope what comes next won't be that bad. And among my prayers? That, when the smoke and dust clears, there will be enough of the fundies left alive, to take them by the hand and let them dig a few graves, let them breath poison air, and let them learn the hard way:

That you call a dream I call a nightmare.