Lord, I am not worthy to receive you. Say the word and my soul shall be healed.
The brilliance of the Bush administration's war on truth was in commandeering an unsuspecting army that had already surrendered critical thinking skills in return for the promise of paradise. A lifetime of reciting self-deprecating mantras like the one above, and blind faith in a deity who would expect it in return for the favors his father sent him to bestow, prepared the Christian soldiers for an unapproachable administration, sent by a higher power that considers itself above question.
The war on truth is creative, carried out behind the scenes, between the lines, under the covers, and up their sleeves. A few subliminal messages, offered in the form of innocuous religious phrases, served as weapons to kill intellects and souls, leaving empty shells to skew the body count. The shells, accustomed to chanting thoughtlessly, now repeat the administration's mantras like automatons.
Embracing God fearing as an admirable trait, Christian soldiers welcomed the opportunity to stockpile admiration, and readily assumed foreigner fearing, non-believer fearing, liberal fearing, and tax fearing. Proud of their Christian soldiers status, they sacrificed logic and accepted anything the administration presented as Christian values, without demanding harmony with their traditional values.
In meshing religion and politics, this administration uses the bible to remind their followers that they already embrace one documented set of contradictions that can be interpreted to support whichever side of the issue benefits them at the time, and it would somehow be sacrilegious not to accept the same level of contradiction from their earthly leaders. They call on their followers to pray, when action would be more appropriate, knowing that puts them in the vulnerable position of waiting for what they trust as an infallible decision from a higher power. Questioning higher power, worldly or heavenly, is a weakness.
By combining religion and politics, this administration has successfully silenced millions of unsuspecting victims. Now, these people march in fear of losing paradise if they question their spiritual or mortal leaders. Stripped of free will and the ability to process new information, they aren't capable of seeing what is happening to them, so we must protect them. We must become true soldiers in the war on truth, arm ourselves with facts, and combat the insidious messages they unknowingly spread. We must ask questions of and for them, and fight to refill their shells with what that administration took from them.
That administration has capitalized on innocence and ignorance.
Poem format:
War On Truth
It's covert
in the dark
behind the scenes
between the lines
up their sleeves
The war on truth is like no other
Religious phrases
with subliminal messages
weapons that kill
minds
souls
wills
no's
Leaving shells that skew body counts
God fearing soldiers
fear of terror
fear of foreigners
fear of taxes
fear of liberals
Stockpiling patriotic fear
Lines blur
preach at rallies
campaign in church
Information gets lost
Questions go unanawered
The administration capitalizes
on innocence and ignorance
Christian soldiers march on
in a trance
rate
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link to this page
Comments: 65
I'm not laughing this time. This does deserve a 10 and I am sure someone who considers him/herself a good little soldier rated in hatred instead of honesty.
I would like to add. Not just a weakness, my friend, but a verifiable SIN! That shall cast them into either REAL firey pit (for non catho's) or Temp hell (for the real Caths.)
This was awesome. I think I'd have ended the poem with...
Christian Soldiers march on
in a trance
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
Casting Non-Christian Blessings on the Waters before you.
Info-Infantry(wo)man!
Wilka
Carter is one who I believe was in the top 3 presidents in the history of our country. He may not have done every single thing right? But he did things for the "right" reasons. A man with a full heart was Carter.
People who aren't satisfied with facts seem to gravitate toward "higher" truth. You know, the kind of truth you make up or that someone else makes up for you.
I wish I could be comfortable with something that's tightly reasoned but false. Heck, I wish I could be comfortable with something that's obvious nonsense but comforting. Instead I'm stuck with an unruly world that doesn't seem to follow the rules I want it to follow.
Sitting around all day,
Who can believe you,
Who can believe you,
Let your mother pray,
Elizabeth, that almost makes me hope there is a hell for the preacher of that message.
I recommend a place in hell for the preacher Elizabeth spoke of near his beloved Bush. I am sure there will be a good crowd there and they can lick their wounds together.
Yuck. Righteous, but...Yuck.
Or maybe I will be bold enough to say smart children.
And then they wonder why there is rebellion and rejection when try to force it on the masses.
Marilyn Manson went to christian school in Ohio. He is an intelligent person. He can speak on issues very intelligently. His music is often angry. Why? He probably wasn't allowed to sing it when he was young.
I see progress. It's not just the kids rebelling and rejecting these days.
Here's a poem:
"Go on, my dear Americans. Whip your horses to the utmost. Swing, whirl with the rest! Open all the valves and let 'er go! Soon you will be under such momentum you can't stop if you would. Only, make provisions, betimes, old states and new states, for several thousand insane asylums. You are in a fair way to creating a nation of lunatics!"
--W. Whitman.
Nothing makes me more sick than excuseplanations. It's so easy to denounce the crimes of others but your and my palms are still blood-red.
But just as the right has been wrong for so long with their inane and contradictory ideologies, the christian have twisted a message of peace in to another cry of war.
Humans are the only species that fouls their own nest, the earth.
That says something about humans in general.
I agree, Lea.
fear of terror
fear of foreigners
fear of taxes
fear of liberals
Stockpiling patriotic fear
Sandy, I love this, absolutely love it!!!
I'm going to feature it on the Resurrection Sunday Group.
http://www.philkline.com/index2.html
composer Phil Kline's setting of some of Rumsfeld's more poetic public statements, in the "Three Rumsfeld Songs." The composer's 2004 release for the Cantaloupe label, "Zippo Songs," received international praise for its frank treatment of texts by Vietnam veterans — juxtaposed with the "Rumsfeld Songs," a wry setting of quotes from the former Defense Secretary.
Three Rumsfeld Songs
(text from Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon briefings)
1
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
2
It's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase and you see it twenty times and you think, my goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?
3
Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.
I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.
And it will be known,
And it will be known to you.
From this perspective, the world is a deceptive place-not just occasionally but inherendy. Such a worldview goes beyond the usual suspects (e.g., deceptive TV ads and phony crop circles) to incorporate a broader recognition of the deceptive nature of the world, including such insights as:
* Like fish who are unconscious of the water that envelops them, we are often unaware of the constraints imposed on our thinking by the taken-for-granted social forces surrounding us-not to mention the gene-based forces within us.
* Some aspects of the social world appear natural, but are actually human contrivances. And vice versa.
* The social roles we play can shape not just our behavior but our identity-often we unwittingly become what we play at.
* We are often ignorant of our ignorance. And the more incompetent we are, the more likely we are to overestimate our competence.
* It is normal for seemingly contradictory things to occur together.
* All good things have costs. Many bad things have benefits.
* Issues frequently appear black-and-white, when in fact they usually consist of grays.
* We typically mistake pieces of the truth for the whole truth.
* Partial truths can be just as misleading as outright lies.
* We are more likely to be misled by people who sincerely believe what they are saying than by liars.
* Self-deception can be an even bigger problem than deception by others.
In short, since it is so easy to misperceive reality, a critical thinker is disinclined to take things at face value, suspicious of certainties, not easily swayed by conventional (or unconventional) wisdom, and distrustful of the facades and ideologies that serve as the ubiquitous cosmetics of social life.
In other words, critical thinkers are necessarily skeptics. Skepticism can be summarized as concisely as this (Skeptic 2005):
(1) Skeptics do not believe easily. They have outgrown childlike credulity (Dawkins 1995) to a greater extent than most adults ever do.
(2) When skeptics take a position, they do so provisionally. They understand that their knowledge on any subject is fallible, incomplete, and subject to change.
(3) Skeptics defer to no sacred cows. They regard orthodoxies as the mortal enemy of critical thought-all orthodoxies, including those that lie close to home.
Convincing people that their worldview underestimates the extent to which things are not what they seem requires a wide range of no-holds-barred examples such as these:
* From the beginning, AIDS has been exaggerated as a significant threat to heterosexuals in the U.S.
* It is far from clear that Abraham Lincoln cared deeply about social equality between whites and blacks.
* Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on his doctoral dissertation and on his wife.
* We fall out of love with our children less often than with our lovers/spouses because our children carry our genes.
* Despite what is widely assumed by professionals in the counseling and education industries, self-esteem has not been shown to be causally related to academic and behavioral outcomes.
* Whatever intelligence tests measure is related to many academic, occupational, economic, and behavioral outcomes-and it is substantially heritable.
* It is far from clear that many returning Vietnam vets were spat upon.
* It is far from clear that child sexual abuse produces devastating and long-lasting effects in nearly all of its victims.
* Studies have found that many gender stereotypes contain an element of truth.
* There may be credible UFO sightings that science is currently unable to explain.
* Chance alone caused the forty-sixth word from the beginning of Psalm 46 to be "shake" and the forty-sixth word from the end to be "spear" in the King James Bible, which was published in the year Shakespeare turned 46 (Myers 2002).
Developing a skeptics worldview means that one's foundational assumptions will be disturbed, not to mention those of others. Toes will be stepped on, tempers could flare, mortified members of the audience may stagger from the room. Hence, there is still more to full-fledged critical thinking.
Howard Gabennesch. (2006, March). Critical Thinking: What Is It Good for? (In Fact, What Is It?). The Skeptical Inquirer, 30(2), 36-41. Retrieved September 12, 2009, from ProQuest Psychology Journals. (Document ID: 996976231).
author of the article, last night was late and I had closed the document.
Call the professor!