Comes Now The Hard Sell

Tomorrow's newspaper column, today:

Kicking off a multi-million-dollar campaign to sell their cheaply-bought, self-enriching, middle-class deceiving, poor-people-harming tax cuts, it’s fitting that the Koch brothers began with an ad featuring a young girl thanking Trump for “allowing” her to say Merry Christmas again. In the alt-universe, the apparitional war on Christmas remains a favorite manipulation, perfectly illuminating their (the Koch’s, Trump’s, McConnell’s, Ryan’s, Hannity’s, et kleptera) confidence in their ability to distract bedazzled voters from their rapacious, destructive agenda.  

Allowing! Well, clutch my pearls and call me Sarah!! Because until Trump, borne to us on wings of angels, beleaguered Christian-Americans had been prohibited – under penalty of (?) – from saying those sanctified words, even amongst themselves, evidently. Kenyan brain implants. Inserted as you watched Fox “news,” neuro-receptors ironically impervious to disturbances. 

Confident that the programmed will continue to buy the fiction of attacks on Christmas and other imaginary horrors, Republicans are relentlessly undoing environmental protections, blessing the poisoning of ourselves and our children. As they deploy voter suppression laws across the land, as they remain silent about (or, improbably, ignorant of) the effluvium of lies coming daily from Trump, they distract the distractible, via a phony “war.” (For those who believe the lie that Obama eschewed the words, it’s disproved in two seconds of googling.) 

Allowing!! Believe it! For, whilst you turn your gaze to heaven, Rs have more regulations to extinguish. Like ones penalizing nursing homes for lousy care. Which they just did. Say it loud: Merry Christmas! (Not you, grandma. Hands off the call button!)  

Allowing!!! All praise be to Trump, giver of those things which He hath not yet taken away. How sweet the sound, how long the silence.  

In this, the most believer-dense democracy on earth (teetering, but not yet pushed over the cliff), wherein Christianity is sprinkled on laws like ash from fires ravaging parched land, and where prayers in the Cabinet Room are led by a neurosurgeon-cum-housing expert giving thanks to God and Trump (not necessarily in that order) for erasing budget deficits after the signing of a bill INCREASING them: people will weep in agreement, thank Dear Leader for allowing them, once again, to mouth those forbidden, commercialized words. (Not fake news: during Barack Obama’s presidency, when an actual president was tweeting “Merry Christmas,” Trump tweeted “Happy Holidays.” You can look it up.)  

Around that Cabinet Room sang they their hosannas and genuflected them their knees. (Only missing were fifty-foot posters and a stiff-armed and -legged military parade.) And He smiled upon them. (More of a smirk, really, but it warmed in them that which had replaced their souls.)  

So cocksure of his deceptions is Trump that he hied himself to Mired-in-Loco immediately post-signature to announce to his pals, “You all just got a lot richer.” Fast flew he, outracing his biggest lie of all, that the bill was about helping the middle class, that he and his buddies would suffer. 

So anxious he was to reap his millions, he signed the bill this year, allowing its effects to commence in 2018 instead of 2019; those who care to look may feel the hurt in time for the next election. Oops. (“Oops” assumes cultists will find their way out of their thrall, to search beyond the promises. Shall one hope?)  

The thing about predictions concerning what I and nearly all analyses consider a regressive, budget-busting, Koch/Trump/Corker-enriching, capitalism-threatening tax bill is that at some point we’ll learn who’s right. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it loud and clear. Will Trumpists, if it’s they? It would require unprecedented rejection of claims of fakery, but there’s a first time for everything. So, while we await the reckoning, let’s take a moment: the year is almost new, a time for resolutions and resolve. 

Here’s mine: knowing the unlikeliness of puncturing the reality-resistant bubble in which Trumpists live, I’ll keep trying. Because, years from now, wandering amongst the rubble, I don’t want my grandchildren (or theirs) to think I was among those gone silent as democracy crumbled around us; when our government, helmed by an amoral, ultracrepodarian mammothrept excused and enabled by an avaricious, conscienceless Congress, turned away from science, from the needy, from inclusive governance; polluted our land, ignored the climate crisis, dismissed our future as less important than making themselves and their paymasters “a lot richer” now. While average Americans paid the price. 

Silence is acquiescence. So, no.

[Image source]

This Is War

Drek The Halls

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Tree Fighting Ceremony
www.thedailyshow.com

Well, you know Christmas approaches when Fox "news" rolls out its annual war on their imaginary war on Christmas, mixed with their predictable outrage that President Obama is taking some vacation time. You know, turning off the phone, going offline, recklessly disregarding all the duties and obligations of his office. The number of vacation days the America-hating black guy has taken is shockingly approaching a third of the number Mr Bush had taken by this time in his term.

That Daily Show clip is worth a watch: I hadn't known about the pilgrimoid views on Christmas.

Bereft of actual ideas, the right wing and their public organ disguised as a news network have become shamelessly dishonest to a level of laughability for anyone with a coma score better than fifteen. Really, you'd think even the sheep-like Fox viewers would get tired of this crap eventually, as Christmas propagation begins earlier and earlier each year and Christianity becomes ever more overtly embedded in our politics.

These are deeply disturbed people.

Keeping The X in Xmas

The final marble has rolled out of Bill Donohue's head.

He's outraged, outraged!!!!, at the news that a YMCA has substituted Frosty the Snowman for Santa the Claus at some annual event or other.

"Christmas is not about Jack Frost; it's not about snowmen," fumed Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. "We're not talking about some secular organization that has no religious roots. If they can't celebrate Christmas, then they should check out. What a bunch of cowards."

Gee, Bill; I thought Christmas was about, uh, Christ.

So I guess it's official: even Bill Donohue agrees Christmas is about a made-up and Americanized guy whose main job has been to promote the buying of toys and getting early to half-off sales.

Raising the indignation ante and 'tis-ing the season, Jim Inhofe refused to horse up in Oklahoma, because of a holiday parade sponsored by a local drinking establishment and whose name was changed a year ago to "Holiday Festival of Lights." Gail Collins, one of my favorite columnists, gives kudos:

Go to it, Senator Inhofe! I love this controversy, and only in part because it diverts Oklahoma’s senior senator from his normal day job of trying to convince the world that global warming doesn’t exist.

We live in a time of so many terrifying, insurmountable problems. It’s comforting to return to arguing about whether the nation’s moral fiber is endangered if Tulsa downplays the religious aspects of a parade full of Santa Clauses that is currently sponsored by a popular downtown pub.

The war on Christmas. The phoniest, most cynical, deliberate, manipulative, and dumbest outrage ever ginned up by Fox "news." And that's saying one hell of a lot.

For perspective, there's this:

A new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq or abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the country's security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to protect them...

.... [On] Fox News segment on the annual Parade of Lights in Tulsa, Oklahoma[,]Gretchen Carlson asked, "[I]f we're supposed to be tolerant of all these other religions, which pretty much everyone accepts, why does it always seem like Christianity is the one to take the boot?"

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who's boycotting the event until organizers include the word "Christ" in the parade's name, added, "[W]hy do they always pick on the Christians?"

In context, "they" appeared to refer to those Americans who wish people a "happy holidays" and organize public holiday celebrations that are inclusive and reflect communities' diversity.

If Republican culture warriors are genuinely worried about Christians being "picked up" and "taking the boot," they're clearly looking at the wrong country.

Well said.

How horrible, how frightening to be confronted by some random evil person who wishes you "Happy Holidays." How terrible the conditions American Christians must endure, forced, as they are, to face good will and inclusiveness every day.

[Added: they just can't help themselves:

GOP Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl quickly took offense to the notion that legislators might be expected to work after December 25 and accused Reid of potentially "disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians."

Words fail.]

'Tis

Lo, the holiday season arriveth, which means the annual rituals of resentment are already in full flower, profuse poinsettia. Like candies at the check-out counter, offense is easily taken. "There's a war on Christmas," we are told, sulum annus, right on schedule. More than mistletoe and mulled wine, it's ubiquitous, indignation polluting the air like spray-on snow. Irate letters fill the op-ed pages, red-faced radio ranters and television talkers spew their righteous anger. There's war, alright. The liberals, the atheists, the Jews, the infidels, rolled into an all-purpose receptacle of rage, are vilified as threats to life itself. Killers, once again, of Christ. Sodomizers of Santa.

What bunch of caterwauling crap!

As surely as the earth has found its way anew around the sun, as predictable as Christmas sales before the turkey is cold, on cue we hear, rising and shrill, in high dudgeon, voices of those demanding Nativity scenes on courthouse lawns, at City Hall. Nothing is of higher import; society is at no greater risk -- our very existence is at stake! -- than from those who think creches and churches are a perfect match. May the joy of Christmas be upon us: Jab the Jews! Mash the Muslims! Bash the Buddhists! Heck with the Hindi! They'll hijack our holiday!!!

What a load of fabricated fury!

Where's the problem? The US has more churches per capita, and a lower percentage of atheists than any other Western country. Christmas is everywhere this time of year: can anyone deny it? So there are some merchants who -- because they think it's good business!! -- prefer to say "Happy Holidays" to their customers. So what? For that matter, what does all the selling and buying have to do with the birth of Jesus anyway? And in what way does the substitution of a phrase in your local mall prevent anyone from celebrating Christmas? Are there more churches in 2008 than there were in 1958? Do they have Christmas services? Is the Pope in the woods? If there's a war, who's winning?

If every church in every city in every state had a Nativity scene on its lawn, you couldn't drive five blocks without seeing one. They're everywhere. So why is it that some expect their governments to provide them as well? Well, as it turns out that's actually an easy one: those who demand it do NOT believe in religious freedom; they simply REFUSE to make the connection between respecting religion and keeping it separate from government. They don't get -- and they never will -- that separation is the greatest protection of religious freedom that there can be. Not to mention that it's generous towards one's fellow man. But they're not interested in that -- couldn't care less, matter of fact. What they ARE interested in is having THEIR religion prevail, officially, over all others. For some reason I'll never understand, it's not enough for them to be able to say "Merry Christmas" to whomever they want, to decorate their own houses and strew wise men over their lawns like fertilizer, to cradle the baby on the grounds of their church, in their homes, dangle him from their rear-view mirrors, slap him on their bumpers. They demand to see it in the public square, state buildings, stuck in the faces of everyone. Not only do they have no concern for those who believe differently, they'd like them to go straight to hell, thank you very much. Toss 'em down the hole themselves. O'er the coals we go, laughing all the way.

There's no war on Christmas. What there is, among some people, is sensitivity to diversity of thought. If there's any degradation of the significance of Christmas, it's by those who seek to cash in on it, whether commercially or by their circumsolarcyclical and well-compensated rants. Those who don't celebrate it -- let's pretend I speak for them all -- have no problem with others who do. Hell, I like seeing nativity scenes on church lawns. If someone merrychristmasses me, I merrychristmas 'em right back. And I can harmonize on Christmas carols better than anyone I know. But Jesus people! Where's the harm in drawing a line? Just for this four weeks, pretend you give a damn about the rest of us. Make like you not only love America, but the people in it. Have your Christmas; pray it, sing it, spend it. Fall on your knees and hear the angels' voices. Jingle all the way. But:

In the spirit of the season, wish everyone well. If a merchant wants to make his money by refraining from exclusivity, let him. Go shop somewhere else if you must. Don't scream bloody myrrhder. Use a little common frankincense. You have your church, your home, your friends' homes; you have your Christmas Tree Lanes. Carols are in the elevators, on the radio; Charlie Brown and everyone else has a Christmas special. Twenty four hours a day you even have your own Christian cable. Several of them. Hell, you can even pray online! So when you look at your city hall and don't see a creche, be glad you live in America. Consider it a gift to yourself, from all the rest of us.

Open it any time you want.

And Merry Christmas!

[Update, 12/3: this should make at least one of my commenters happy!]

[Maybe this, too.]