Random musings of the last few months

1.  All religions continuously evolve as various sects form, evolve within themselves, sometimes turning into something new, sometimes fading away. Conflict between sects of the same religion is a continuous part of human history. At times the conflicts are mostly intellectual contests as various doctrines are presented, defended, challenged, and changed. Often the conflicts are simply violent confrontations between warring sectarian groups. Those are the source of much of the world's misery, currently threaten the daily survival of millions of people, and may engineer the extinction of the human race.

Drawing clean lines between the sects is often impossible. Sects within a religion must share large blocks of ideology and doctrine, and the prejudices of the person drawing the lines must always be considered. For this atheist all religions are sects of “god belief”, much of it pure superstition and all of it based on a magical view of the cosmos where a “god” can do anything it likes without limit or restraint.

Then I consider the Jewish / Christian / Muslim faiths three sects of the same religion, one based on the God of Abraham as described in the Jewish scriptures. Those broad divisions are divided into additional sects, and those divided even further; a reflection of the tribalism which is a part of human evolution. Because I was born in America and raised in the Protestant sect of the Christian sect of the religion of the God of Abraham, Christianity is the faith I know the best and the one that I abandoned. It is also the faith that all Americans simply cannot avoid. Christianity is its various forms deeply affects American politics and sets the foundations for much of the national identity.

In America several of Christianity's major sects are pretty easy to define. There are somewhat liberal and much more conservative branches of the Catholic sect. Among the Protestant sects there are branches much more liberal than the Catholic brand, and those much more conservative. There is also the growing sect of the Mormons with (I am going to guess) its own branches more conservative and more liberal. And to all of this I am going to add my own sect, that of American Capitalism Christianity.

American Capitalism Christianity (ACC) is its own sect, though its adherents self-identify as Catholic, Protestant, or Mormon. (Drawing lines between sects is always an exercise in “fuzzy logic”, and not in a good way.) In spite of these three distinctions, American Capitalism Christianity is a real sect of like minded individuals. Among the shared doctrines of ACC is a absolute faith in unrestrained capitalism and its religious counterpart of a prosperity doctrine. ACC has as its benchmark of “good” that which makes money. Oddly, it doesn't matter if the individual believer shares in that prosperity, only that he or she believes that they might become wealthy in the future should they serve god in the proper manor. Bound up in this ideology is an antipathy for the poor, or anything that would appear to be a social safety net for the disadvantaged.

This love of money is the defining doctrine of American Capitalist Christianity and sets it apart from every other Christian group. But it is not the only doctrine that defines this sect. Deep at the core is a fundamental racism / tribalism. Though there are some minority individuals who claim this sect as their own, fundamentally this group is the home of the middle aged and the white; with their social values carried from the 1950s.

2. Liberty …

Liberty is not the right to self-absorbed narcissism. Liberty is the chance to live in a society where the value and aspirations of each individual are cherished and supported by every other member of that society. Liberty is found where universal civil rights are protected by the full weight of a first world society. Liberty is found were every individual is rewarded for his or her contribution to a better life for all, where no one profits from the contributions of another. Liberty is found where no one is allowed to coerce another in any way for any thing. Liberty is only found where the full resources of a society are focused on protecting me from you, and you from me.

Liberty is not an individual thing. Liberty is a gift offered to each individual by an enlightened and powerful community.

Liberty is too hard, too complicated, and too fragile a thing for any individual to gain alone. Liberty is a community effort. Which is why liberty has been lost in the United States of America.

3. Clive Whats-his-name, the T-Party / Republican rancher who owes the US taxpayers a million or so dollars for grazing his cattle on public land, is back in the news. The last time was for avoiding being arrested (hopefully temporarily) by holding Law Enforcement Officers off at gunpoint. Republicans all over the country cheered him as a true American Patriot for that, at least until it became clear he was also a dumb shit racist.  Of course, had he been a Black American holding off the law with a gun, he would have been filled with government issued bullets in less than a heartbeat and Republicans all over the nation would have cheered.

This time he is making the news for claiming God instructed him to start his “civil war” with the US government. If Clive was brown skinned and skinny, sporting a scraggly beard and turbine, and invoking the Islamic sect's version of the God of Abraham for his jihad against America, every Republican in the country would be howling for his head on an NSA platter. But Clive is fat and white, and invoking the Christian sect's version of the God of Abraham as the justification for his “civil war”.  No one is calling for his head, and he has yet to take up residence in an NSA holding cell for terrorists.  I would love to hear any Republican explain why that is without sounding like a idiot.

It is hard to imagine that Clive is so dumb as to believe he has actually provoked, or is involved in, a civil war with America. Seal Team Six, by all accounts and all by itself, could end the War With Clive in less than a week without so much as working up a sweat. They appear to be pretty good at offing religious fanatics who threaten the Homeland. A single Predator drone could do the same in less than an hour. The only reason Clive is hale and whole and still shooting off his mouth is, as an American inside the boarders of the US, he has claim to certain legal rights from the same government he derides as his enemy. A good bet would be, should Clive ever pull the trigger and actually kill a Law Enforcement type in the name of his God, he will have the chance to talk it over with the Almighty, face-to-face, a few moments later.

It is also telling that in a world of war, poverty, child sex slaves, and genocide, God's big problem is with the America's Bureau of Land Management.  Even more amazing is His prophet, chosen to bring holy war to America, is a welfare rancher who likes guns. For Clive to see himself as talking with, and being a particularly chosen servant of, the One-And-Only-God-Of-All-The-Cosmos, is surely a level of delusion that clears the bar of being a serious mental illness with several light years to spare.

So its hard to tell if Clive should be arrested for the criminal he clearly is, laughed at for the fool he clearly is, or medicated for the mental illness he clearly has.