Betty Bowers' Response to the Pledge of Allegiance

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America's Best Christian
Dearest brothers and sisters,

During these troubled times, my fellow sister, Betty Bowers (http://www.bettybowers.com), has commented on this.

(NOTE: PLEASE, if you don't have a [twisted] sense of humor, don't read further.)

....


As I watched fellow members of God's Own Party throw themselves before live television cameras this evening to approximate outrage over a Nixon-appointed circuit judge taking umbrage in the recitation that we are one nation "under God," it struck me that it is rather less plausible that we are in fact "one Nation" ? regardless of whom we may find ourselves under. Upon reflection, and after watching only a moment of daytime television, I actually found the suggestion rather insulting.


The court's decision, however, is rather convenient for True Christians. After all, it will be far easier for Jerry Falwell to roust up some tithes for his latest pyramid scheme by using Old Glory sporting a huge phlegm ball from the judicial bench than blaming the fires in Arizona and Colorado on Planned Parenthood or a pack of insolent drag queens in Telluride. And while the Senate passing a resolution 99-0 tonight to bravely support the Pledge of Allegiance may not win any inclusions in the last-Kennedy-you-can't-say-anything-bad-about's "Profiles in Courage," it does provide a convenient opportunity to feign conviction.



Nevertheless, allow me to break ranks and applaud this secular court! The more often the unsaved spit in the face of the Lord Jesus, the more likely He is to snap, bring about the apocalypse and rapture us four or five True Christians to Glory. That is why, as America's Best Christian, I am very much in favor of being rather slipshod in stopping terrorists, scraping flint near the tinderbox in the Middle East, blandly ignoring the Pakistanis as they target their nuclear warheads and, or course, doing nothing to control guns or global warming.



Clearly, I share this shrewd apocalyptic outlook with President Bush, as anyone can see from looking at his foreign policy. After all, anything that triggers End Times catastrophes may mean the deaths of billions of people, but, more importantly, it also heralds my phone call from Heaven to say, "We've just completed turn-down service in your Milky-Way-view gold mansion Mrs. Bowers." Glory!



As for this "one Nation under God" slogan, many of my brethren in the Republican party (and even some Demon-crats) have resorted to some histrionic history in support of the supposedly objectionable statement. Fortunately for us, the past has proven to be a rather malleable thing.



History is like shampoo: exotic or generic, the last step is always "repeat." Like bad fashion, if you wait long enough, you'll see something you wisely threw out on someone younger and wonder, "Why wasn't I there to warn them?" Since we're apparently helpless to avoid our past's obdurate cycles, isn't it a better use of our time simply to change the past, rather than try to sidestep its inevitable encore?



People have been tampering with precedent ever since Adam and Eve. Left by an irascible Lord with a relentless flair for drama to eat cockroaches and avoid the homicidal mood swings of their son Cain, the planet's first evictees took to bemoaning the monotony of Eden's perfection (and the annoyance of being interrupted by snakes very time they tried to have a conversation). But humans are more likely to burnish and perfume the past than discount its pleasures. For example, after Lot spent his first evening in exile getting drunk and having sex with his saucy daughters (Genesis 19:36), he was heard to remark, "At least Sodom's debauchery got me out of the house."



Even more resourceful than the characters who populate the Bible are those of us who keep a copy in our purse. Conservative Americans have embraced inventive revisionism with alacrity. After all, it is rather inconvenient to acknowledge that the men who forged our wonderful democracy were products of the Enlightenment and viewed the Bible with alarming skepticism. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson had the temerity to refer to that lovely leather-bound book as a "dunghill." (Oct 12, 1813 letter to John Adams.) And John Adams wrote: "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!" (April 19, 1817 letter to Thomas Jefferson.) Frankly, who can forgive Adams for signing the Treaty of Tripoli, which provides in Article 11 that "The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion"?



Faced with such unsavory facts, Christian conservatives have had no choice but to emulate the Lord and recreate the Founding Fathers in our image! Suddenly, our nation's history is imbued with Puritanical showmanship for piety that our actual ancestors were apparently too preoccupied by thinking to display. Many assume that the slogan "In God We Trust" has been stamped on coinage and courthouses since before the Liberty Bell got its unsightly crack. Not so. Our national motto is the less divisive (and decipherable) E Pluribus Unum ("out of many, one"). We didn't decide to flaunt our distrust of people who actually lived in our country by adopting "In God We Trust" until the 1950's cried out for a gesture to thumb our noses at the godless commies in the USSR.



This fervor to sideline an eagle and adopt a national mascot who could not only fly, but also damn people who rubbed us the wrong way, led to the insertion of the words "under God" (which is similar to being under Pat Buchanan, only not quite so hairy) into the Pledge of Allegiance during the last gasp of Christian America, known more generally as the "McCarthy Era."



Peggy Noonan has made a busy vocation out of turning Ronald Reagan, a divorced man who didn't speak to his children and was almost impeached for Iran-Contra, into her mascot for "character." Our current President is assisting Peggy's wistful efforts by banning the disclosure of all the Reagan administration documents, which threaten to intrude on God's Own Party's gilded recollection of Reagan's magnificence. You see, contemporaneous photocopies are rudely annoying in their niggling refusal to conform to more pleasing after-the-fact regalements of what occurred.



But, truly, why should we have to pause 200 ? or even 20 ? years to make history more presentable and palatable? In this age of instant gratification, we can't be expected to wait until so-called "time" passes to allow less energetic historians an opportunity to languidly "reflect." Being admirably proactive, we have now taken to revising our history while we are actually living it the first time.



Just look at how we are industriously repackaging our current leader before he even leaves office. In a time of crisis, we needed an eloquent and polished President so, like a Southern seamstress in a rush might say, we "whipped one up!" Indeed, believing that W is competent and an eminent statesman is simply the result of our shared anxiety and earnest desire for it to be so. This mirage is akin to our nation having a collective hysterical pregnancy. I can only hope future generations are grateful for the time we have saved them by altering history before it has even slipped into their meddlesome hands.



So close to Jesus, we hate all the same people,


America's Best Christian

A woman known throughout Christendom for her joie d'apr?s vivre

....

XOXO

Love, Whortense
 
Well GOP Controlled Whortense
I am speechless
I remember when SNL used to be that damn funny
You should email that to Rush L (not L Unplugged mind you)
Well I do call myself LOVE MUSCLE in my pre-sinful femme fatale introductions, so my humor hasn't disappeared up into that big hole we call the ozone layer.

I should go fuck myself about now
XOXOXO

:heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart:
 
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