Ten Years

Ten years and we're more divided as a nation than we've been in a long time. In ten years we went from a moment of common skin to one where we allowed the politicians and their handlers to erase that precious lapse into temporary humanity. They filled that quickly emptied hole, with our help, yes our stupid and blindly obedient help, with hatred and judgement and division based on the stupidest of reasons: political ideology.

And of course, religion. Let us not forget the last refuge of the damned, their precious and overwhelmingly destructive weapon called religion. Would there even have been a 9/11 without religion? Would there have been the horrible polarization of one people against each other without the evil and wretched pulpit poundings by the holy hatemongers?

When life is turned upside down and humans are at their most vulnerable, there are always the sick and twisted voices in the crowd sensing the perfect moment to inject their hatred into the open wounds. There are always the behind the scenes puppet masters exploiting the moment for personal gain to start a profitable war, a dirty and secret arms deal, a private army paid for with taxpayer blinded-by-ideology dollars. There are always the politicians waiting with their hands out to profit from the corporate greed of the warmongering wealthy who never miss a chance to make a buck from human misery. And worst of all, far worse because they pretend they are doing good instead of the same evil, are the churches who spread fear and terror and obedience so they have a ready crop of willing idiots to do the bidding of the wealthy and morally-deficient.

This is what the other terrorists have accomplished in ten years as they ripped into the horror of raw wounds with the ferocity of savage beasts blinded by their own blood lust:

1. A terrified and beaten down populace whose only source of information comes from turning the remote to "on" and ingesting what comes from the screens and the radios without question, with the same blind and unquestioning obedience they were taught  in church.

2. An increasingly ignorant and brainwashed populace who believe unions that their grandparents were beaten to a bloody pulp forming so their grandchildren could work decent hours for decent pay without being exploited by the corrupt and the wealthy, are somehow the enemy.

3. The elevation of the most bigoted and ignorant mouth breathing knuckledraggers into the face America presents to the world.

4. A completely programmed population who takes to the street to support the right of mega-insurance and pharmaceutical corporate lobbyists to deny them basic health care, and if they lose their homes, their loved ones, their ability to live as a functioning human being, that it's somehow their fault for not being good enough to afford a decent health plan.

5. The horrible and completely religion fed outright hatred of anyone "different." It's a hatred that creates reasons and makes up lies to justify hate. It hatefully interprets bible quotations into an excuse to hate gays, brown people, black people, non-christian people, non-religious people...anyone different. It creates justification to invade women's bodies with theology and misogyny. It invites the bigots to crawl out from under their rocks and think they have the right to dictate what goes on in other people's bedrooms and lives. It allows the racists to walk around without their white sheets because it's open season on anyone different, especially a Black President.

6. The destruction of any functional education system by demonizing teachers, because after all, there is only one real cure for ignorance and that is education. It's why the tyrants always burn the books first but always leave the Bibles intact.

7. A government that doesn't even pretend to work for the people anymore. They know if they're not re-elected, their wealthy donors will give them plush jobs for life as a reward for the millions they made for them while in office. And the corporate lobbyists know they can easily replace the politicians if they don't win their elections because the American people will never hold them accountable, never make them work for their vote.

8. Demonizing anyone and anything that could really make a difference in the average Americans life. Any politician who accidentally slips through the net and tries to work for the people is soon caught up in some exaggerated scandal to discredit him or her until they're no longer effective. Any journalist, any writer, any news anchor who dares to break from the pack is soon reduced to braying jackass for the corporate masters. For every hate mongering gasbag like Rush Limbaugh, there are hundreds of ethically challenged and greedy wannabes waiting for him to mess up so they can replace him as the voice of the terminally stupid.

9. Allowing greed to define every aspect of American life to the point where fraud and outright theft of the country's wealth and resources became acceptable because greed became acceptable. But in order to steal outright, the people had to be convinced by corporate windbags like Limbaugh and the Fox News Presstitutes, that all regulations preventing them from taking whatever they wanted had to be thrown out. No limits on the amount of pollution companies could spew into the air or dump into the drinking water or leave behind in an oily infested mess were promoted as a necessary thing if they, the almighty corporations were to continue to thrive, to thieve at will.

10. And after the outright theft, the busting of the unions, the elimination of health care plans, the theft of what little income was left was taken so the rich wouldn't have to pay any taxes on their stolen gains, those who were desperate enough provided what every desperate society has provided: a volunteer army eager for a miserable paycheck so the wealthy could enrich themselves with endless wars fought over religion.

I'd say in light of these accomplishments, Bin Laden won. He really did destroy America and every day we remain divided, we reward him for doing so.

We The Sheeple by godless_heathen
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Ten Years

Religion as Sheeple Control

Now that the latest crapture scare has been postponed until October so Harold Camping can collect  millions of more dollars, it's time to focus on those he used his fear mongering tactics on to accumulate wealth. They are feeling betrayed, disappointed, scared, and left behind. They want to know why only their bank accounts got raptured. Others see a potential gold mine of fools that still have the potential to be milked even more for jesus.

We're not talking about ordinary people here. These are the dumbest of the dumb, the ones that religion prepared from an early age to be unquestioning, idiotic, cult-leader following morons. They're the first ones stepping up to be used whether it's by a church, a cult, a political party, or anyone with an agenda needing lots of unquestioning obedient bodies to create the illusion of grassroots.

It's about the Republicans, the Koch Brothers, The Chamber of Commerce, and Karl Rove spending millions and millions of dollars to create an illusion the Tea Party is a people movement instead of a backroom deal among rich assholes. It's like Farmville, only you populate it with idiots instead of cows.

None of this would work without a ready supply of less than intelligent sheeple who have already been programmed by their churches to never question authority, to follow each other obediently off a cliff because jesus told them to, and to empty their pockets in the name of salvation to make  saviors like Harold Camping, Dick Cheney,  and Karl Rove even wealthier than they already are.

For those who are shaking their heads as they read this and think religion is not that bad, especially their own,  show me a country that is formed and shaped by its religion and I'll show you a country that is going backwards instead of moving forward toward the next century.

Examine the history of your own church, the politics it promotes, and the money it collects from you to promote that political agenda, and then tell me your church is only about spiritual growth and belongingness. And I'll tell you again that the first thing that tyrants do when they want to control a country is to bring god and religion to the forefront of their politics and get people like you to pay for it all.

"In 1956, the nation was suffering through the height of the cold war, and the McCarthy communist witch hunt. Partly in reaction to these factors, the 84^th Congress passed a joint resolution to replace the existing motto with "In God we Trust." The president signed the resolution into law on 1956-JUL-30.  The change was partly motivated by a desire to differentiate between communism, which promotes Atheism, and Western capitalistic democracies, which were at least nominally Christian."

read more here

For those who are unfamiliar with the McCarthy witch hunts (mostly those of you reading dumbed down history books forced on you by religion-infected schoolboards), it was about decent people who committed no crimes other than daring to think for themselves, who were labeled as ATHEIST Communists simply because they didn't belong to the correct church or promote the party line of a particular religion-based political party.

Setting aside the reality that most Atheists in America are not now nor have they ever been a large bloc of Communist Party members (even Atheists like to buy lots of cheap crap at Wal-Mart and eat crappy fast food), the painting of one with the brush of the other is yet another trick employed by those wishing to use religion as a noose around the necks of the idiotocracy.

I'll even go so far as to say it wasn't the fear of Communism that scared the power mongers, but the lack of religion. After all, Communism, like any ism, depends on groups of followers all believing the same thing and marching in unified brain and boot to destroy the unbelievers.

This is no different than religion which demands the same blind obedience, or Fascism which allows no dissenting opinions, or the current Republican party with its teahadist minions wanting to destroy everyone and anything that doesn't buy into their Randroid selfish cruelty and paranoia.

There is no difference between religion and Communism, religion and totalitarianism, religion and mental slavery, religion and Fascism, religion and mind control, religion and lemmings walking blindly off a cliff because their "leader" ordered them to do so.

Religion has been and always will be a tool used by the rich and powerful to control the weak and stupid, and scam artists like Harold Camping will be sipping Pina Coladas on some sunny beach with all the money he raptured from the dumb ass sheep as long as religion is so intertwined with politics they are no longer separate entities.

There's a reason our forefathers were so concerned that churches and government remain separate entities. They knew the potential for abuse and were trying to prevent it from happening to the new United States of America. But they forgot about the all-consuming greed of politicians and the wealthy who saw religion as a very useful tool for controlling the masses and making them do their bidding.

And never in their lives could they have imagined the kind of idiots that religion created in a couple short centuries, the kind of people who forgot the sacrifices made so its people could live in freedom from the oppressive yoke of religion.

If they came back to life and saw what this country has become in the name of imaginary playmates and evil puppet masters caring only about wealth and power, they'd abandon it to its own stupidity and look for more intelligent life elsewhere, because seriously, the lives they gave simply weren't worth the ignorance that grew from those sacrifices. In fact, it's a slap in their faces that will resound for centuries and will eventually destroy what they fought so hard to build.

One Night Stand Jesus by godless_heathen
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Religion as Sheeple Control