Rev. Haggard and Other Hazards

Five weeks ago we enjoyed Ted Haggard’s pronouncement that President George Bush is not Satan. Years before, the evangelical leader Reverend Ted Arthur “I Did Not Have Sex With That Male Whore And Never Used That Meth” Haggard made a key endorsement George Bush needed to win the presidency in 2000. He is a good honorable man and I, for one, totally believe his denials of wrongdoing.

Haggard was only being Christlike in his love for his male flesh merchant. His frequent payments of $200 to his for-hire boy toy were not for sex. They made Haggard an instrument of God’s Love to a poor struggling sinner. Likewise, when he bought unwanted meth from his drug-dealing hooker it was just a kind way to give without demeaning the recipient.

Who needs happy endings, when they’re on the Way to the Lord’s Eternal Happy Ending?

Speaking of lies, cowardice, and criminal conduct, as of last week I planned to spend this column conveying the idea that while Bush, Cheney, and a large percentage of their staff and cabinet are guilty of High Crimes and Misdemeanors galore and unquestionably deserve mass impeachment, it would be bad for the country to take that route.

There’s the NSA warrantless wiretapping surveillance program which violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and so violates the provision in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that Congress “shall make Rules for the Government & Regulation of the land and naval forces” and violates the provision, in Article II, Section 3, that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” It undermines freedom of speech (1st Amendment) and the right of counsel and to fair trials (6th Amendment, because the government eavesdrops on client-attorney discussions) and citizen’s rights to due process (5th Amendment.)

Gosh, while I was making that list I plum forgot to mention the 4th Amendment. IT SAYS DON’T DO WARRANTLESS SEARCHES RIGHT THERE IN PLAIN ENGLISH. The Supreme Court ruled some time ago (1967) that wiretaps constitute searches for the purposes of applying the 4th Amendment.

That’s at least six provisions of the Constitution undermined, and at least 3 flagrant violations of both the letter and the spirit of provisions that speak to the heart of what makes the United States a great nation and distinguishes its government from a worthless dictatorship. So George Bush and accomplices are guilty of continuous disregard of our founding law.

Then there’s the 2003 Iraq War, which satisfied the legal definition of a war of aggression and therefore was and always will be a war crime under United States law. It violates Article VI: “all... treaties made shall be the Supreme Law of the Land” and “all executive officers shall be bound to support the Constitution.”

The use of “unlawful combatant status” is also a flagrant continuous unabated and unmitigated violation of treaty law ratified by the United States Congress and represents an insult to the Constitution and to every citizen who gives a damn that this is a country of laws not ruled by a king.

When before has it been necessary to remind any United States administration that to torture a state prisoner is to commit treason against that state?

But, hey, a mass impeachment would be disruptive, so I was going to say, let’s live and let live, it’s only 2 more years, blah, blah, blah.

Then I learned that George Bush intends to deny detainees (not yet proven guilty of any crime) access to lawyers and to keep them in isolation IN PERPETUITY, on the unbelievable grounds that they have been the unwilling subjects of secret interrogation techniques.

This is the most despicable, vile, disgusting, assault on American Law, on fundamental human rights, on common decency, and the good name of the United States since this country practiced slavery.

Now we have no other choice but to try this man and every one who has put him up to this, simply to show the rest of the world that we don’t condone such depravity.

Bush Beats the Devil

George Bush is not Satan.

That was the final word on the subject from Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals, the day after Hugo Chavez claimed otherwise. Haggard was very clear about it: "NAE theologians and scholars have conducted a thorough exegetical study of the biblical texts concerning the person, disposition, and earthy manifestations of Satan (Beelzebub, Lucifer, Prince of Darkness). They have incontrovertibly concluded that, contrary to the assertion of Hugo Chavez, President Bush is not the Devil."

I totally agree. I have done my own extensive research using alternate tools, and have determined that, without question, President George W. Bush is not Beelzebub. Without going too far afield, I would like to add that he is also not Alfred E Neuman, a chimpanzee, or the latest reincarnation of the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus.

For one thing, if he were Beelzebub, he would not have said this: “I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.” Beelzebub would have had far better sense than to speak like that to Wolf Blitzer on national TV. However much you may dislike Beelzebub, you have to admit he is one shrewd personification of Evil. A chimp would have just flung his feces at Wolf. I don’t know exactly what Paleologus or Alfred would have said, but I’m sure they would have committed offenses on entirely different levels.

As usual, no one in the world really knows what George Bush meant to say. Did he mean that historians are such bad people that they would reduce to a comma the sacrifices of all the US soldiers who have fought in Iraq, including the now nearly 3000 who have died? Did he mean that he’s with these imaginary bad historians on that point? Or did he just mean to remind us that he doesn’t like to read, so if he were handed a history of the Iraq War in say, twenty years, he’d only read to the first comma?

Or maybe he has a deeper meaning in mind. What’s a comma anyway? It’s a hesitation and an interruption. Maybe he is using the word comma accurately as a metaphor for the way he has used the Iraq War and the so-called war on terror to interrupt America’s history of freedom, for the sake of creating and buttressing a sham democracy on the other side of the planet.

Maybe the comma is meant to indicate what he and Congress have together made of us.

The United States as we have known it is now hanging by a thread, with the passage last week of S. 3930. Congress was told by the Supreme Court to fix our policies on detaining and trying terror suspects, to bring them into line with the US Constitution. Congress has basically spit back in the face of the Supreme Court and said to hell with habeas corpus, to hell with the 5th Amendment, to hell with the 14th Amendment. Beelzebub can have all of them; we’ll take Bush and fear.

The thread I mean is the Supreme Court again. If the Supreme Court lets S. 3930 stand, there will be no branch of government left to preserve the constitution. Without a functioning constitution respected by any fraction of our government the United States will have essentially been comma-ed out of existence.

George Bush calls the Geneva Convention vague. I have to wonder if he has ever encountered any of his own pronouncements in print. Does he not even read himself? Not only does he not have the political acumen of Satan, he lacks the vanity, and in his case that’s not a good thing.

Satan would have a lot to teach Bush. He could show him how to google himself, teach him to take pride in his language, and how to reach new levels of competence, so he can screw us all even better than he’s doing now.

Step Up to the Hate

“Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a humor column about hate crimes out of my hat!” “That’s not a humor column, Bullwinkle!”

OK, hate crimes aren’t remotely funny. I think that’s a given. But hate can be amusing. For example, I have come to realize over the years that my hatred for Steven G., who was my next-door neighbor when I was 11, has assumed comic proportions. That’s because, in the 45 years since he got two buddies to hold me down so he could punch me in the face without getting punched back, Steven G. has become my personal metaphor for all that is evil in the world. While others denounce Satan, I denounce Steven G.

Some days I spend hours thinking up delicious revenges upon Steven G. I imagine Steven G. coming to my building to see me, to ask if I could come out to play, just like he always used to do. And I would say no just like I always did, because even before the punching incident I hated him, because all he wanted me to do was come outside and worship him, and be dazzled by the cool way he dressed, and be awed by how many girls he promised he would have in the coming years, once he had managed to have any; that was his idea of “playing,” and I despise being that bored.

So in my fantasies I would say no, but Steven G. wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, just like every day 45 years ago. But, unlike 45 years ago, this time I would get all Quentin Tarantino on his ass. Oh, yes, I’d come out to play all right. “Bring it on, Stevie G., I’m coming out to play! Look, Stevie G., I have a pound of peeled garlic, a vice, a couple of crowbars, and a tube of Super Glue! Guess what game were going to play!”

My point is that hate can be amusing because it’s just an emotion. It’s not whether you hate; it’s whether and how you act on it. Since I haven’t yet really stuffed a pound of peeled garlic up Steven G.’s nostrils, or done the other things with the vice, etc., thinking about it can still be entertaining.

Here’s a purely rhetorical question: If hate crimes are bad because they involve hate, does that mean that stalking, a “love crime,” is good?

Seriously, no, it doesn’t. But the question might help explain why the general public is confused about the issue. People are constantly writing to tell editors of newspapers, “We don’t need hate crime legislation; all violent crimes are hate crimes, therefore all violent crimes should be treated the same.”

Here’s the difference: if I Super Glue Steven G.’s face to the front of his tight, purple, package-revealing, hip-huggers, I will have committed an act of violence against one Steven G., but I will not have terrorized all Steven G.s everywhere in the process.

If I had my way, advocates for hate crime legislation would stop using the term “hate crime” and start talking about terrorism. The reason the crimes call for more severe penalties is that they are acts of terrorism against groups. The immediate victim is intended to represent the rest of the group and the crime meant to terrorize the whole group.

Until I get my way, It would really help the debate if opponents of hate crime legislation would stop attacking the misnomer, and deal with the real purpose of the proposed laws. “Why make hate a crime?” makes as much sense as “Why do we have anti-trust laws? Isn’t trusting good?”

Here’s an unfunny factoid: Right now, in this country, homeless people are being murdered, for being homeless, at a rate (per their total numbers, per year) comparable to the rate at which Blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1968. America commits its pogroms on a personal scale, one at a time, up close.

My Place in Hell Is Reserved

Six weeks ago, annoyed by some injustice or other, I was moved to prattle on and on about the idea of justice and what I didn't know about it. Now let's talk about another subject that I know nothing about, even though some people who claim to love me say I incarnate it: Evil.

One reason I don't know anything about Evil is that it doesn't exist. There, I said it. I'll say it plainer: evil (small e) exists, in the sense that there are things in the world that I must by my nature oppose. But no objective Evil exists.

Here is where I insert the "prattling on" part. Going back to six weeks ago, I then said some words to the effect that righteous outrage is a moral neutral like a 5 on the gray-scale, whereas all the different kinds of justice in the world put together would be a moral rainbow, or maybe a Jackson Pollock.

To at least one reader on our very own "editorial" committee, that discussion was reminiscent of the late Susan Sontag's comments on the 9-11 attackers. Sontag was not talking about righteous outrage; she spoke of the moral neutrality of courage. She said the attackers didn't lack courage and couldn't be called cowards. Our reader, let's call her L with one big L, thought that I might have even cribbed from Susan, but actually I cribbed from some old friends of mine who hadn't heard of her.

But I'm interrupting my own prattle. The point is that moral neutralities are a lot more common than most folks in these parts give them credit for. That's because most folks in these parts are dualists. They believe there's Good and there's Evil and everything lies on one side or t'other, as my mother would've put it.

So let's say we contemplate a thing, like a bag of rice. A bag of rice has got to be Good, or a bag of rice has got to be Evil. Or take a box of ribbed grape-flavored condoms. It's got to be Good or Evil. Or take Susan Sontag, before she died. Susan Sontag has got to be Good or Evil. Well, which is she?

Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York, decided a while ago that Susan Sontag was Evil, based on other unspecified but presumably similar statements she'd made concerning Israel. In fact he said that upon her death she would occupy the Ninth Circle of Hell for all eternity. That would be the innermost Dantean Circle of Hell reserved for traitors to family, country, guests, lords and benefactors, which is also the Circle occupied by Satan himself. I'm sure that Mr. Koch didn't change his mind when Sontag made her remarks about the 9-11 attackers.

What others identify as treason in Sontag's remarks was actually reason and the honesty to speak it. Courage IS morally neutral. A charging bull elephant doesn't earn a special place in heaven for disregarding the elephant gun. The 9-11 attackers were on a suicide mission. To deny the courage that their mission required is to forever deny a key ingredient in understanding them and understanding what happened.

Here are some prattling questions to round out the discussion. Would you think I was Evil if I said that peanuts kill people? How about if you were the head of Planters? What if I were an employee of Planters? To be a traitor you first have to be a loyal servant. But what if you serve an Evil master? What if you serve Satan? Does disloyalty to Satan get you into the Ninth Circle?

[No, I am not suggesting that Planters is Evil. There IS no Evil!]

Incidentally, this column should get me to the Seventh Circle of Hell, for violence to God, art, and nature. Two more Circles to go, and I'll make a bull's-eye – maybe next week.