REALITY CHECK
HOLY HELL FOR HOLY WEEK
James Campion - a recovering Catholic.
...anytime more than two people are gathered in the name of God there had better not be any sharp objects available.

---

It’s been another banner year for God and all of his servants in the cause of ugliness.
If it isn’t Islamic extremists ramming airplanes into buildings or seventy thousand choruses of "God Bless America" as fighter planes pile up the death and destruction in Afghanistan, then it’s the molesting of children and cover-ups by the Catholic Church or the daily maiming and pillaging between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. The Hindus and the Muslims are ten minutes from annihilation in the Indian/Pakistani border war, and right now somewhere there is ethnic cleansing going on somewhere in the holy name of extinction.

The week we go to press with this one, it will be Passover and Holy Week for the Jews and Christians, and everyone will recall the Lord’s murder of innocent Egyptian children and the assassination of a Nazarene first century mystic. But no one seems to really know what any of this will do for the plight of humanity, except create more boundaries and kingdoms and ways for us to be different and feel better than each other.

It’s funny. Every time I’d read some screaming headline last week about these revelations of child molestation by priests, I could not help but think of the night Sinead O’Connor tried to make a stand on Saturday Night Live against the Vatican’s cover-up of rampant child abuses in Ireland. And how anyone with verbal motor skills wanted her lynched and burned at the stake for it.
Before the singer tore a photograph of the Pope in half, she recited an a cappella version of a Bob Marley song infused with lyric about the church’s silence to the continued mistreatment of races and children, ending with the infamous statement, "Fight the real enemy."
A victim of child abuse herself, O’Connor decided to use her art and freedom of expression to reveal the terrible secrets no one could admit, and it effectively ended her career for almost a decade.

That was ten years ago now. At the time I defended it as not only an act of compassion, but also a reasoned protest against the repeated violence in Ireland between Protestants and Catholics, ostensibly a religious war which had raped that country and taken countless lives for decades.
Little did I know. Little did anyone know.

One thing I did know, and have known for most of my adult life, is that anytime more than two people are gathered in the name of God there had better not be any sharp objects available.
We are so evolved, us humans, you know. We conquer and invent and politicize and socialize and cram and jam and pursue that money. And we hang onto our stuff, don’t we? And sometimes we put labels on that stuff, like country or color or gender or God.
Yeah, God.

Because you know that’s it’s God’s will that our stuff is safe from the other stuff. And all the silly talk of what God wants and needs and what God told the other strange people, that’s just evil or wrong.

We know what God wants. Can you believe that some of these other people don’t even have a God? They’re blinded by intellect and science and skepticism, and they blot out truths with power and greed and drugs.

Of course, that really doesn’t matter much, because we’re all screwed. Nothing we can do about that. We grew up in this twisted arena of misjudgment and fantasy wherein our stuff and our God were somehow more on the nut, and by subjugating our will and reason to reverence and superstition we reserve the right to belittle and castigate and kill and shove people out of their homes and countries and bury their traditions.

Manifest Destiny is the Inquisition is the Holocaust is the Potato Famine is Slavery is Tibet is fill-in-the-blank.

As a recovering Catholic, I think it is imperative to point out, especially this week, that all this self-serving, egotistical bullshit that is done and said and rationalized in the name of Jesus has to stop.
Will it stop? Of course not. Let me repeat, we’re already screwed, but it’s time our children get a quick lesson, or perhaps it will be your kid that’s too afraid of God and his handmaidens to ask why the soft-spoken man with the white collar keeps touching them down there.

And don’t expect these cretins who run this line of propaganda up the flagpole to blow any whistles. They have to keep the gravy train stocked with coal for the engines to chug along unimpeded with no one asking any questions or too bloated with fear to dare point any fingers.

Yeah, they know all about it, these big business religious hypocrites. They have a blueprint somewhere in the war torn corners of Israel, where the martyrs who tried to stop this mess are buried. They know all about what happens when you try and halt the cycle of hate and ignorance, for every Sunday there is the lifeless image of a man hanging from a cross above their heads to remind them.
And so we march on...

© James Campion 2002 'Mr Reality Check'
email realitycheck@jamescampion.com

Previously by James Campion

HOW THE APPLE WAS WON KEN KESEY RIP SWANSONG ISRAEL - Blinded by the light? GEORGETOWN UNCLE RUDY RESURRECTION CIA Elton Brand Feedback to James Campion articles Battleline America ABC News Dick Cheyney

READERS RESPONSES March Articles

James, I think the lot of those Enron cocksuckers need be made examples of. I say they all get a month of hard time. I'm talking Riker's Island, with the rest of those animals. If they want to go to a country club after a month, fine. Although your report seems to indicate Lay might want to stay there. While America's Most Violent is busily rendering these nimrods a size 7 poop-chute, the IRS can redistribute ALL of their funds back to Enron's hapless employees' 401Ks. And I do mean ALL of it ("Here's your new Maytag box, Mrs Fastow. Mrs. Lay will be by with the shopping cart for your garbag... I mean lunch"). I think a special web page needs to be created for the HR manager who decided that no warnings needed to be put in place for those who decided to put all of their retirement into Enron stock. We can call it www.don'tletthisdoucebagworkforyourcompany.com.
I'm not entertaining any negotiations over this. These pirates have to spend one month staring down the NFL, and their families are sent to the poor house. The only payment I request for this fabulous idea to have a front row seat when their sobbing children are yanked out of their private schools for lack of funds. Slater

My fine young James, In regards to your recent piece on Donald Rumsfeld, etc: The Afgan Minister of Tourism was recently pulled from his plane, beaten to DEATH by an angry mob of travelers, and thrown fifty feet to the tarmac below. Why, you ask? Because a bunch of "pilgrims'" plane was late. What better way to prove to your God your utter devotion. "Well, God, seemed like what needed to be done, we just couldn't stand for getting to Mecca an hour or two late." At this point, I've pretty much decided that I'm the only person on this earth that makes any sense, the rest of you are all animals, and if "my" government has to spend every last tax dollar available to kill all of you, I'm down with that. I'll be like Burgess Meredith, except I'll keep my glasses safe. pete the monster

James, Just finished reading your article, I have many questions! First, why would you sell the pentagon for a case of Genesee Cream Ale when they’re clearly worth a case of Guinness? Second, When did my favorite actor John Wayne grow penetrating fangs? Third, Where does Brittany Spears jog? Fourth, What the hell is a XXXX fight? Fifth, Why does your wife have a bullhorn? And one comment, Donald Rumsfeld is on a powerful dose of Ecstasy, not on stress caffeine.
Steve Muratore

JC, Chill out. Rumsfeld is simply this decades Reagan , he scares the Arabs, the UN, and the Palestinians. This is A GOOD THING A VERY GOOD THING. Those bastards should be scared of us, James, because they deserve to go to sleep every night and worry if they will see the dawn. I feel for Daniel Pearl and his family, but isn't it strange we haven't heard as much about the two Christian Missionaries held hostage in the Philippines for the last year by Abu Sayef (who have beheaded 13 so far two of whom were Americans). Is it because they are Christian Missionaries or is it because they are not journalists? The funniest thing in DC today is watching every Democrat Idiot try anything and everything to slime Dubya and Nothing works. Enron turns out to be a Clinton scandal and an Arthur Anderson Scandal, Global Crossing another Clinton /Macauliffe scandal with a touch of Hutchinson Whampoa (Can you say Chinese Peoples Army) now controlling our underwater telecommunications cables to Asia. We still haven't heard all the dirt about Global Star(remember LORAL/Chinese money) Which just went belly up after making mucho Clintonistas mucho dinero. By the way the Hutchinson Whampoa will probably take over the leftovers of that company also. Yes we will be reaping the Clinton wheat sown in the 90"so for many years to come. Daschele for President! Remember the last Presidential candidate from the Dakota's-- I Just Can't wait. Griff

Sir, What I'd like to know is ... how does the Bush Administration have the unmitigated chutzpah to tell Israel to cease doing what the USA itself is doing? The collateral civilian casualties inflicted by the US in Afghanistan in pursuit of Al Qaeda/Taliban forces greatly exceeds anything inflicted by Israel on the "Palestinians." Yet Bush, Powell, et.
al, are suddenly toeing the Arab line after bravely standing up to it for the last year.
Ariel Sharon was absolutely right last year in telling the US that Israel will not be another Czechoslovakia circa 1938, i.e. sacrificed to Arab terrorists so that the US can pursue Arab terrorists. As a US citizen, I tell our President the same. Knock it off with the double standard. Heshy Mr. Campion: How can you say that Dick Cheney has a set of "steel rocks" for his Arab Nations tour 2002? This latest chapter of American Global politics was scripted way back in 1991 by Cheney and Poppa Bush. Why do you think Schwarzkopv (?) retired instead of moving up in the company? Cause he was pissed off at the bosses for not letting him finish the job. What he didn't know was that we never intended to.
I was a combat engineer in the Gulf. One of the things we did was build roads in the desert so the support units could follow the tanks as they waltzed into Baghdad. But we were stopped way short. That wasn't in the plans. We needed Saddam as a whipping boy. Remove him, and there's no Middle Eastern Tony Montana. We simply downsized the military by de-activating any units that possessed equipment we could leave behind as war stock. I had no less than four brand-spanking new AK-47's broken down and distributed inside my Caterpillar D7-G Dozer w/ ripper. Am I the only schmuck who couldn't make money off that? You know damn well that Cheney couldn't advise Poppa to "cut off the reptiles head." Who the hell would watch the show, then? Liken this trip to Wayne Newton being whisked through an annual convention of Wayniacs. Everything's in place, just smile for the cameras. Or, if you want, Russell Crowe reviewing the troops in the opening sequence of "Gladiator”.: "On my signal, unleash Hell." Operation Anaconda, Operation Anaconda...where have a heard that before? Oh yeah, I read the book before the movie came out. Maybe you read it? 1984.
The "Nitty" you're looking for is the Shah of Iran. After 23 years on hiatus, he'll be coming to a puppet government near you. See: "History Repeats Itself-How the US recycles former farmhands." The "Gritty" is how we managed to pit India versus Pakistan without dropping our drivers' license at the scene. Hey, you want to conduct military operations in a Muslim country? Just manage to have Muslim extremists bomb their neighbors' Parliament so that country's pesky military has to deploy to said border and ask the US to mediate a nuclear card game.
Shit, I was saving the $400 in my bank account, but the way things are going, I might as well take that trip to Irving, Tennessee I've always wanted. You know, Irving? The town that hung an elephant with a crane at the turn of the century.
Oh, and the Harbingers of Doom are the producers of "Celebrity Boxing." What a country. Anyone who thinks "The Matrix" was just a movie hasn't been "plugged in" to the Fox network. "The Matrix is a place where anything is possible. Why, you could even get some WHORE whose claim to fame is blowing a former President to get her head beat in by World Class trailer trash, best known for hiring her husband to break the knee of her chief opponent in a Figure Skating exhibition." If we could just shut down the mainframe, humankind could know a world BEYOND the Matrix!
Bohammer

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