When I drive home from work at night I can't stand listening to commercial music on the radio. It rots my mind. Instead, I listen to talk radio. But usually all talk radio is pretty much the same load of shit. My favorite station is 90.7, KPFK, Pacifica public radio. KPFK is listener supported and has a really good muckraking news department. But late at night they play mostly music, and while it's usually better than the commercial stations sometimes it just gets boring. And so while flipping through the channels I come across this religious station (98.3, KDAR out of Ventura County.) So it's interesting, lots of sermons telling people to give money, etc. It's interesting to see the totally opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the news as well, like during the 2000 riots in Seattle the religious station had on a cop who's message was essentially, "These people are traitors who need to be thrown in jail," while KPFK had a news crew on the scene and were interviewing people getting shot with rubber bullets, nailed with pepper spray, even one guy who wasn't involved that was arrested because he was walking down the street talking into a cell phone (the idea being that since he had a phone he must be one of the organizers.) I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
So KDAR became the second choice on my dial for a little while. Then one day I tuned into a show called "Focus on the Family," which is run by a guy named Dr. James Dobson. It was essentially a tabloid show disguised as the news, with various hidden Christian commentary about how everyone who doesn't believe exactly what Dobson preaches will go to hell, with the usual plea for money at the end, nothing different here. Lots of anti-evolution, gay rights, anti-environment, pro-Bush/Republican bullshit, all the usual crap one expects from a right wing religious talk show. But what caught my attention was another show brought to you by Focus on the Family called "Life on the edge, LIVE!" A call in show where teenagers ask questions and Dobson and a guest do their best to fuck up their minds. Among the subjects I heard discussed that first night:
1) A girl called in to ask if it was okay for her to kiss her boyfriend.
2) A young man made comments to the effect that girls that wear skimpy clothing are tempting him and "Drawing him away from the Lord." (I suppose all teenage girls should wear potato sacks then.)
3) A girl called in right after to comment how skimpy clothing goes against God.
4) Someone asked about the dangers of internet chat rooms.
5) A call about the Satanic influences of Wicca
6) A girl called in about (I shit you not) the scriptural basis for wearing makeup
I couldn't believe it. I had to turn it up. I thought these people were phonies, fakes, hired by the radio station as some sort of alien invasion scheme. I am a normal guy in my late 20s. I was a teenager less than a decade ago. I don't really remember anyone, even the freaky religious people I knew, devoting so much energy to these types of "problems" that they felt compelled to call a radio show for an answer. Has our society become so pathetic that kids are afraid to KISS each other? When the hell did this happen?
Up until recently there was a girl at my work who was into this stuff (I'll call her "Houdini" as that was her nickname at work, because she always disappeared when there was work to do. ) So I decided to ask her some questions. Yes, it is wrong to wear too much makeup. Yes, Wicca, Astrology, and all forms of New Age religion come from the Devil. Yes, internet chat rooms are evil. Yes, it is bad to even KISS a boy if you're not married. But through these conversations I learned some other disturbing things:
1) Houdini doesn't believe in Global Warming. She doesn't think it's happening. I showed her a newspaper clipping I saved about the disintegration of the Larson B Antarctic ice shelf (complete with pictures.) Her response: "I'll believe it when I see it."
2) Houdini doesn't believe in Evolution. When I asked her how Adam's sons suddenly got wives, she said "Adam and Eve had a lot of children, so their wives were their sisters." So according to her, the entire 6 billion + population of the human race is a result of massive inbreeding. Okay...
3) Houdini supports the president in all his endeavors because he is an admitted Christian. When I asked her about the bullshit 2000 election, she replied "God puts people into authority. He wouldn't be president if God didn't want him to be." She found a justification for every bad thing the Bush white house has done in the last three years, everything from rolling back arsenic in drinking water to the War in Iraq. All of her comments ended with "He's a Christian and I trust him."
4) Houdini thinks all Muslims are evil, even the ones who are law abiding citizens, and that anyone who is not a Christian will burn in hell forever.
5) Jesus was white.
Something is wrong here. Something is seriously wrong. There's one thing to be said about young people being ignorant of what's going on in the world because the corporate media is full of shit and as kids they are more interested in partying than the news. It's something else when their entire world outlook is totally warped by fucking right wing preachers. I don't think I'm the only one who can see that the total brainwashing bullshit I'm-afraid-of-my-sexuality morality coupled with the force-fed distortion of news and world events by religious nuts is a bad combination. It adds up to a person who's outlook on the world is so dependent on what they think "God" is saying that they'll believe anything you tell them.
And that's precisely why the world is so fucked up today. It's fucked up because people like this VOTE. People like this obey orders, and to them those orders come from GOD, telling them to vote down gay rights, kick the crazy people out of mental institutions into the street, or drill in Alaska for oil. The deception is total, they absolutely refuse to believe that their exalted leaders in the political and social arenas could have any other motive besides what's best for the world. They would never dream that they are being used to further political agendas, restrict people's rights, or make corporations money. They would never dream that they are somewhat responsible for the suffering of other people here and aboard. They would never dream that as a result of their actions the people in power are fucking up the world for the rest of us. To them, they are doing the right thing.
I did a little bit of research on Focus on the Family. I found that the radio show is just a front, and what these people really are is a right wing political group who purposely use their congregation's donations to engage in lobbying, fundraising for politicians, and guerrilla style lawsuits designed to bend the law. They are active in over 80 countries, make over $100 million a year in "suggested contributions," and are run not as a church but as a "corporation," with Presidents, Vice presidents, a marketing department, etc. (all while still maintaining tax free status because they are a religious organization, bastards.) Focus on the Family was very active in advocating the passage of Colorado's Amendment Two, which denies equality to lesbian, gay and bisexual people while providing for special rights for heterosexuals and in advancing similar ballot initiatives in Maine. Focus has also extensively used the AIDS plague to advance their abstinence-based views regarding sex education. Focus on the Family has maintained a long-term, mutually-beneficial relationship with the Family Research Council (a political lobbying organization or P.A.C, founded by one of FOF's original board members,) and has also shown a great deal of support for the Promise Keepers organization (some fucked up pseudo-Christian cult that makes teenagers take vows of fucking chastity until one day in the far off future when they get married, thereby making it even harder for me to get laid.) FOF seems to especially hate gay people, and are working 24-7 to get rid of gay marriage in Massachusetts (and collected over $90 million in that state alone last year. Sounds like they're using gay marriage as an excuse to make money to me.) Dobson himself is trying to get a constitutional amendment passed to outlaw gay marriage in all 50 states. A quote from Dr. James Dobson: "We must amend the Constitution if we are to stop a tyrannical judiciary from redefining marriage to the point of extinction."Focus on the Family hates rock music and tells parents to send their kids to those "reprogramming centers" if they get caught with a Black Sabbath CD. They are the reason that libraries and schools have web filters on their computers. The list goes on and on.
These are the people that are giving spiritual advice to kids? These are the people that are shaping young minds, the people that are going to run the country in the future? I used to post on the Life on the Edge BB under the name "Hawanja," mostly as a way of lashing out at stupid kids, but also to give a differing viewpoint to those brainwashed fools. I encourage everyone reading this to do the same. Maybe if we all get together and flood their stupid BB with posts they'll have to shut the fucking thing down. Seriously, check it out, if only to see how pathetic these poor children are.
The thing was with TV preachers like Pat Robertson or Jerry Farwell is that all you had to do was to see them speak to tell how full of shit they were. I recently saw Farwell on FOX news with his nose inbetween the president's asscheeks (I think he said something to the effect of, "If God wants me to praise him I'll praise him, if he wants me to condemn him I'll condemn him." Hey Farwell, I think I hear God telling me to tell you quit being a rich asshole and give away all your money to homeless people. ) While watching the man speak I couldn't help but notice how many times he blinked his eyes, something like 20 or 30 times a minute. I'm no expert, but I believe fidgeting, losing eye contact, or blinking excessively are definite signs of a liar. They're called tells, the thing the poker player looks for to see if you're bluffing. Farwell couldn't bluff his way out of a paper sack. The difference between Farwell and Dobson is that Dobson pulls his shit behind the scenes, you don't see this guy on the nightly news. He keeps himself away from the mainstream media and out of the public limelight, and like some criminal mastermind works his schemes in the shadows, until suddenly you wake up to find you live in a theocratic nazi Germany.
I know who Kaiser Socae is, his name is James Dobson.
Dobson isn't the only Christian demagogue out there, but he's certainly one of the most powerful. Most Christians in the world are honest, tolerant, trustworthy, hardworking people. They just have the same problem we all do, their leaders aren't interested in them, and they are only being used to make the rich guys at the top more money no matter who gets hurt. It's all our problem. These people have to be stopped before they take over the country. They have to be stopped before they make it a crime to listen to cool music or watch a movie with sex and violence in it. They have to be stopped before they start throwing people in jail for being gay, or being Muslim, or being any other type of Christian than they are. They have to be stopped before they take away all our civil rights, turn America into a Christian police state, and start World War III in the Middle East. They have to be stopped, and we have to stop them.
