Fundamentalism and Zealotry

This election wasn't a vote for or against Bush in the eyes of many. The people - and the rigged voting machines - that helped him get a slim victory (sorry, 3 million is just 1% of the entire U.S. residential population and isn't the broad victory even the media calls it) - turned out because they hate and fear, and even returning a man who will take their children, empty their wallets, and render a mess everything we value is better than them having to come face to face with what they hate and fear.

This is a terrible irony, folks, because we constantly point at Muslim fundamentalists and demonize them just as the Muslims point to Zionists of the Jewish faith for their damage and destruction. It's so dangerous and hate-filled, we say. We say, including people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft. Yet here, we're all supposed to become Christian fundamentalists if we want to have a say in how the U.S. is run.

Blind faith of any type is a very evil thing. It's usually born out of desperation and usually demanded by people who feel they cannot control their lives and their world any other way.

I believe in God and I value that greatly. But God lets us know that He/She/the power is beyond the scope of how we do business and politics. My God doesn't ask me to condemn Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and atheists because they don't believe what I do.

God gave us all minds and free will, yet about 57 million people went to the polls on Tuesday and said that their will must reign and they are not partial to situations where the facts don't fit their faith. They've largely decided Christian zealotry is far superior to what those heathens practice. Or they couldn't be bothered to think at all so they just went with the crowd.

And you know what? Christian fundamentalism as practiced here perhaps far more dangerous than any other type, because we use it to club not only ourselves but the rest of the world. Look at Tom DeLay, that great Godly man. He's not content to just screw up Sugarland, Texas - no, he's got to spread his brand of mindless rot to the entire rest of the world.

Screw anyone who tells you that you have to join the fundamentalism rhetoric to change the results next election. Evolution happens by natural course; what they practice is anything but normal.

Do we have to understand them and learn to work around them? Hell, yes. But we don't have to slither on our bellies to do so. Let's get back to evolving, rather than devolving, shall we?