Our President Barack Obama

Welcome to the new America, newly awakened from its horrible nightmare.

FUCK THE FUCKING FUCK OUT OF YOU DIPSHIT INBRED RACIST FUCKS! Sane Americans are taking back our country and we’re fucking pissed!

And damn, we wish we were in Grant Park right now.

A Pointy-Fingered Work in Progress

You know what, you cute little doe-eyed believers? You, like the media, need to grow a pair. It really doesn’t matter how lovely and good-hearted and sincere you are. It doesn’t matter what charities you donate to. We don’t even care if you buy organic or not. We’re fucking tired of your crap.

If you want to buy into an institution that has, for millennia, perpetrated the most unthinkable torture and genocide against people on every single populated continent, you know what? It’s time to own your complicity in this crazy-ass fundamentalist mess, or you better have a damn good explanation.

“But Jesus wasn’t like that. Jesus wouldn’t approve of what Christianity is doing.” Yep, we’ve heard that. Year after year, abuse after abuse. And somehow, after 2000 years, raping and pillaging still seem to be the first-resort tools that Christianity as a whole wields wherever its authority is threatened. Sooooo, you tell us, who’s not getting the Jesus memo? It seems no matter how many kindly, bright-eyed lovers of the Lord you pull together, all wanting so badly to be “just like Jesus,” after a certain critical mass is reached, those same peace-loving, salt-of-the-earthers start bombing the shit out of somebody. Or electrocuting the icky gays, or forcing fourteen-year-old rape victims to become the mothers of the rapists’ children. It’s a bizarre phenomenon that ought to be studied by quantum physicists - the more Christians you gather together, the less Jesusy stuff you can find in them.

“Not my church! My church is wonderful! We have a lesbian pastor! And we donate money to fight AIDS in Africa!” Well, that’s precious. Good for you. We’re sure that makes you feel differenter and specialer than all those bad Christians who do bad things. At this point, if you call yourself a Christian, either you’re doing so despite the knowledge that the whole of Christianity is pretty fucking fucked, or you’re insisting that Christianity is good and wonderful if all the other Christians would just agree with you and not the crazy Palin fundies.

We’re not buying that shit anymore. This is why: if white people never discussed racism because “hey! Not ALL white people are like that!” then we never would have seen Brown v. Board of Education; we never would have seen school desegregation; we never would have seen anti-discrimination laws; and we sure as hell wouldn’t be seeing Barack Obama viably campaigning for President. Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Audre Lorde would have just been some uppity dissidents.

So we’re saying, by way of this analogy, that all of Christianity needs to deal with its seriously fucked up elements. White people were really, really lucky to have incredible leaders such as MLK show us what the fuck was up. We didn’t deserve him or what he did for us, but we got him anyway - perhaps this is a trope you Christians recognize. White people had to change, though. MLK couldn’t do it for us. We had to learn, and oh, we are still learning, how not to suck so fucking much. And white people who give a shit about racism know it’s important to keep pushing ourselves and one another out of our ignorant little caves, little by little, even when it’s just us in our little white groups where nobody of color will know if we say a fucked-up racial thing and then laugh about it.

We want to draw a distinction here. Non-shitty white people own up to the racism we’ve absorbed and try like hell to shed that shit. Shitty white people pretend they’re not racist and get really bothered when other people - particularly people of color - start talking about racism. Hey, guess what? If you’re SO NOT RACIST, NOT AT ALL, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT, then why the fuck do you think we’re talking about you, Lady Macfuckingbeth?

Christians, we’re calling your bluff: You’ve benefited from being on the winning side of history for, uh, gee, just about all of your existence except for a couple of sicko cage matches with lions. (The cases of indigenous people fighting back because they didn’t want your fucking smallpox blankets don’t count, but thanks for playing.) All of modern language, law, government, and even the structure of knowledge has either descended directly from a Christian worldview or has, at this point, been so heavily influenced by it that you might as well try to pry the swim out of a fish. Look, your missionaries have trampled all over every inch of this earth, so how’s about you get down to the really difficult work of getting your giant group of brothers and sisters to stop murdering, raping, bombing, torturing, robbing, slandering, and lying in the awesomely sullied name of your God? Doesn’t it offend you, too?

Moderates and leftists who don’t subscribe to your beliefs have been more than accommodating. You get a “no fly zone” around your “personal beliefs” and yet you take no responsibility for the unbelievable actions that are being done on behalf of those beliefs. This is ridiculous. When we’re talking about the latest crazy, unconscionable shit that Christians are doing by justifying it through their Christianity, and you pipe up to say that “Oh but I’m a Christian and I don’t believe that’s right,” you’re preventing any discussion of what needs to be done by making the focus all about you and your beliefs. Fuck you for that. It’s not helpful. Unless you’ve got some insider ideas about how to get the knuckle-dragging fundies to stand up on two legs and evolve, we don’t wanna hear it. What’s at stake is not whether you’re a good person. What’s at stake are the lives and livelihoods of innocent people who are not you. You have the privilege. So STFU.

Maybe, though, you just caaaan’t because your faith is about the goooood neeeeewwwws you have to share with the world. First of all, unless you’re talking to someone raised by wolves, everybody’s heard the Jesus shit, okay? Secondly, and more importantly, maybe this is where you need to go back and do a little work on yourself. Maybe underneath your proselytizing urge is the fundamental belief that people who don’t see faith your way are not quite there yet, not quite fully realized individuals. If you really believe that God wants everyone to buy into your Jesus deal, then maybe you think there’s something not quite complete about the non-believers around you. You’re ascribing an inferiority, in a sense, to people who haven’t “found” your truth. You do, as a member of the privileged class, get to get away with believing this, but it makes you a shitty person, and worse, it perpetuates the global pattern of Christians doing what they want to non-Christians based on that same perception of the heathens’ inferiority. Hopefully we don’t have to remind you that much of slavery in America was justified by the argument that “morally inferior” Africans and their descendants needed the structure of Christianized slavery - for the sake of their own salvation. WTF?

Are you really okay with people who don’t believe, or who believe different religious stuff than you do? Really? If you’ve looked at your own racism, this is like that. If you’ve looked at your own sexism, this is like that. You no longer get a free pass to be a fucking asshole because you’re a “person of faith” - we don’t owe you that, and if you think we do, then that’s your fucked-up sense of entitlement you need to work out. We’re done showing automatic deference to you just because you believe something that starts and wins more wars than it loses.

“But how can you hold me responsible for what the crazy extremists are doing? I’m trying to set an example.” Oh, boohoo. Isn’t the U.S. demanding the exact same thing from (primarily) Muslim nations? Better get rid of your extremists, or we’ll bomb you all! This is where the privilege of being a Christian and that of being an American overlap. Unlike you, Christianity as a whole is not setting any sort of Jesusy example. (Nor is the Christian States of America, for that matter.) And, unlike in your case, Islamic extremists actually do face a giant dictatorship with a zillion-dollar military that will use any means necessary to eradicate what it perceives as a threat to its “way of life.” Christian fundies do not face this threat, no matter what the fucking Left Behind books say. Nobody’s going to do a massive airstrike on your town just because you’re the little martyr holding up your annoying-ass candle, and if you think so, you’re fucking deluded. Nobody gives a shit about your faith but you. Sorry if that’s disappointing, but a grown up who’s not completely narcissistic can deal with that.

“Okay fine, so if you have all the answers, why don’t you fix it?” Hooo, boy. We sure hope that if you’re white, you don’t pull that line with a person of color. And we sure hope, if you’re a man, that you don’t try to put a woman in her place with a line like that when discussing sexism. Here’s the point: It’s YOUR religion. It’s YOUR responsibility to fix it. We think the fundies are so fucking insane we don’t even begin to know what to do with them. Ultimately, it’s Christians who need to put a stop to Insane Death and Destruction Christianity. If you think it’s okay to go to your nicey-nice feel-good liberal and tolerant church on Sundays, pat yourself and your friends on the back for being so fucking good, and totally ignore the horrifying shit that those other Christians are doing both in this country and around the world, you suck. Your church’s first concern needs to be stopping the Christian support for this Christian war. It’s a part of your privilege that you can get away with not being concerned, but it’s not okay. That’s like sitting back and expecting people of color to stop white racism. Like expecting women to stop men from beating women or raping them. Your group’s ideas are to blame for this shit we’re in, and if you want to keep hanging on to your beliefs, you better step up and take some responsibility for the damage they’re doing to the world.

We’ll help you. But it means getting the fuck OVER your holy-ass picture of yourself and dealing with the fact that you’re choosing to be part of a very old and very catastrophic thing. This means:

• Know your church history. There’s a reason your bible includes the books it does, and leaves out the ones it doesn’t.
• Know your creed. Who wrote it? When? Whose versions were edited out?
• Ask yourself if your faith would be the same if you never talked about it again. If not, ask yourself why, exactly, you talk about your faith when you do.
• Ask yourself whether it’s important to you for other people to perceive you as a good person. What is that about? Does this influence your faith?
• Know who has suffered at the hands of Christians. Where, when, why? For what stated purpose? For what real purpose? Don’t forget modern economic policies and embargoes. Also don’t forget about religiously-motivated international weapons deals. How does this knowledge make you feel? Deal with those emotions, don’t deny them.
• Consider what other prejudices you may be hiding behind your beliefs. Most likely, you’ve absorbed a great deal of sexism and homophobia along with your religion - particularly if you were raised with Christianity. Do you still get “freaked out” by different people? Because Jesus didn’t.
• Check, and double-check, your “good works:” is there a potential for you to do unintended harm even while you want to help other people? Think long & hard on this one.

Hey, you know what? Nobody’s perfect. There’s not an easy way to stop crazies from killing each other and taking the rest of us with them. But Christianity has to change, not its victims. We have to start making it change by acknowledging that Christianity, as it currently exists, IS the problem. The big game of pretending like it isn’t? We’re not playing it anymore. And we don’t care if that hurts your feelings. We’d rather see an end to the insanity than protect your delicate, unexamined faith.

Feel free to go nuts in the comments.