Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
-John Lennon, 1966
I have a real problem with religion and sport utility vehicles. Ever since the last Presidential election, the two have become inseparably linked in my mind for what they represent and what they mean to our country. I have tried to make my peace with them but I am unable and I no longer feel the need to try. Somehow the rabid need to smile beatifically and tell people that you are in tune with the wishes expressed by the creator of the universe and having to drive off-road vehicles to the local Wal-Mart have become entwined into a single entity for me. A large, pious, single-minded beast, slowly transforming this country into something I will never tolerate. Fervent evangelical Christianity and unabashed oil consumption are doing too much damage and any sort of appeasement should no longer be offered. Enough is enough. Stop telling me how big you are, how right you are and how better you are. I’m not impressed. Your single-minded nature is your strength and your Achilles’ Heel. Just wait.
While broadminded people of fairness, intelligence and compassion are bleakly asking themselves how they could have lost the hearts and minds of this great land, roughly 51% of our people believe that the politicians and media handlers who answer only to the Energy Lobby and justify their horrifying policies by invoking Christianity have America’s best interest at heart. Most of them have to know by now that they have been aggressively lied to about our time’s most important matters: war, our safety in the world, our financial well-being, our health, human rights, liberty, the lost lives of sons and daughters… but, astonishingly, it doesn’t matter to them. It was laid out plain and simple last November in an unrelenting pastiche of gay marriages, war heroes besmirched by draft dodgers, ignorant leaders tolerated, tolerant leaders rejected, each day filled with messages of fear, hatred and, of course, the love of Jesus. Strong. Simple. Us. Them. Two hundred and twenty-eight years of valuing leaders with intellect and vision down the tubes. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
According to the most recent U.S. Census, ownership of sport utility vehicles increased by fifty-one percent in the last five years. Now, one in eight American drivers are driving one of these dangerous, arrogant, gas guzzling TRUCKS with names like Explorer, Expedition, Navigator and Pathfinder to go about their daily errands, shoehorning these elephants into the white lines of parking spaces originally measured out for cars as we knew them. In the mind’s eye of their inner pioneer, they are splashing around rocky, overgrown, muddy, seldom explored terrain when, in reality, the only advantage an off-road vehicle has to these people is the ability to hop the curb in the mall parking lot, power drunk with the knowledge that they can kill any sedan driver on impact, so they can get home in time to watch CSI: Miami.
Big. Strong. Simple. Us. Them.
I know people who have purchased these trucks just because they were afraid of getting hit by them. If midtown traffic is our current form of jousting, then, by God, get the biggest stead. They’ll think twice before getting in the way of your left turn when you are sitting tall in the saddle of your new Durango. This may not seem extremely significant but it is. The pervasive culture of our age is a mean, selfish one. We value aggression most and we really love telling people what to do. Donald Trump takes his apprentices into the boardroom and fires one of them, in front of the others and the rest of America, of course. It wouldn’t be the same without humiliation. People in large numbers will turn to their TV to see their fellow American’s eat a plate of maggots in order to win a neat little pile of cash. The exit polls of the last election still burn in my mind with that single word standing as the most important issue to most Americans: Values. Nobody’s fooling me. I know what “values” mean. Your values imposed upon my values. The inalienable right to tell people what to want, believe and do. The Puritanical nature of this country obviously traces back to the early settlers but these people were not Americans as the term has come to be known. The brilliance of Washington, Jefferson and Franklin were to come later and had nothing to do with the earlier intolerant, religiously fanatical Puritans with their stocks and dunking pools. In fact the Puritans’ penchant for public scorn, humiliation and moral ostracizing is not that different from today’s meat and potatoes American. From its inception and with few deviations, The United States Of America embarked on a linear quest for improvement; The Constitution, The Bill Of Rights, Abolition, Expansion, Suffrage, Industry and Entrepreneurialism, Civil Rights, Equal Rights, Human Rights. Obviously, we were always capable and culpable of gross inhumanities throughout our history but the underlying momentum always seemed to be, in varying degrees, forward. Today, fear of intellectualism, science, as well as differences in sexual and religious orientations are quickly turning my country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty into an intolerant wasteland, drying up and hardening into crimson blotches on our national map.
Why did this happen? Certainly some of this shift can be attributed to the cultural pendulum swinging away from the unrelenting progressivism of the twentieth century. A society’s attempted retreat to simpler, if bleaker, times. A Dark Ages for the new century comprised of equal parts cultural, economic and environmental devastation. Our Red State neighbors (and the Reds who dwell amongst us in the Blue States) have, for the first time ever, put the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our once balanced government under the control of a single, ruthless, deceitful and selfish juggernaut that may finally spell the end of this country as we knew it and for what? The lust to tell other people what not to lust after. Historically, it makes sense. Some people will always be more comfortable with a clear definition of good and bad. It is always they who are good and some other people who are bad but that is, of course, the best part. Big. Strong. Simple. Us. Them.
I am convinced that when people put Jesus Fish, “Support Our Troops” ribbons and even American Flag or, sadly enough, “Remember 9/11” magnets on their vehicle, they are making political statements more than anything else. It is all thinly veiled “Vote Republican” merchandise. You can be reasonably sure that virtually none of the people behind the wheel voted for John Kerry and they would be just as comfortable with a “Stamp Out Alternative Lifestyles and Non-Christian Religions” bumper sticker if they thought they could get away with it. The fact that their Christian Right Wing agenda has become so successfully entwined with patriotism and love of liberty is just one more example of the astonishingly Orwellian (read Fascist) manipulations we have undergone in a short period of time. If there is any real hope for this country and the world we are a vital part of, it rests in tolerance, a government free of religious influence, and everything else contained in that wonderful Bill Of Rights that made us the envy of the world for so long. It’s not that complicated, almost self-evident:
Be yourself and let other people be themselves. I will never understand why that is so hard for some people.