Palin's Death Committee as a Projection of the Fundamentalist God

made the charge that President Obama's health plan would install committees to decide who will receive life-saving care and who will be dispensed with. Many commentators have discussed the fact that the idea is not rooted in reality, and linked it to the intense, strident, at times violent tone of the health plan opponents who have disrupted so many debates and discussions across the U.S.A. But where did Palin's strange thought come from in the first place?

One clue lies in the religious fundamentalism so vital to the sizable, ultra-right wing of American politics. The basic tenets of fundamentalism, as laid out in the 1909 work, The Fundamentals, written by a large committee of devotees, basically sets their god up as a one-man Death Committee, although undoubtedly assisted by his many angels and saints. Fundamentalism views all humans as sinners, that is, we all are afflicted with a "sickness unto death", to misapply Soren Kierkegaard's term. Our only hope of salvation and redemption lies in following a strict set of rules that, come judgment day, will be considered a free ticket to heaven or a long sentence in hell. In other words, their god serves as his own Death Committee.

The mean-spiritedness of this religious matrix is demonstrated by its adherents' view of those who don't agree with them. It's bad enough that many fundamentalists view their belief system as the only way to heaven, thus condemning many fellow Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, atheists, pantheists, pagans, etc., to the everlasting flames. What's really crazy is how pissed off they are that others don't believe as they do. I mean, here we've got people who have found the key to the universe and eternal life. They believe in the absolute word-for-word truth of a book that was stitched together over the course of centuries; rewritten, re-translated and mis-translated; borrowed heavily from other cultures' texts; and was probably not taken literally by the very people who wrote it! That last point is rarely addressed. The people who wrote Genesis, aside from borrowing heavily from the Sumerians and their successors in Akkad and Babylonia, very likely viewed the Genesis creation myth as a metaphorical meditation on cosmos, reality, and psyche. This is precisely the role of such creation stories in most societies. Besides, Genesis is a Jewish book. How can fundamentalist Christians in modern America claim it as their absolute, literal truth?

Fundamentalists believe in miraculous healing and a few minutes watching Benny Hin "cure" people on-stage during one of his fund-a-thons makes one wonder if his credulous audience believes that they already have an inexpensive health plan - just go to Benny. Another staple is talking in tongues. I always thought talking in tongues meant you spoke another language you had no other way of knowing. But the films I've seen of fundamentalists talking in tongues show them reverting to the language of a 10-year old's notion of magic spells. Lots of "Zs", as in shazam and Alazel, and lots of "Ls" as well. It's all pretty much the same rolling of syllables. Not an Akkadian, Russian, Egyptian or even French phrase among them. Of course, with a mind-set where anything is justified as coming from their God, fundamentalists can claim to speak the language of angels which mere non-believers cannot recognize, but again, it sounds like the nonsense syllables children pronounce by candlelight around a Ouija board.

But hey, what do I know? Maybe this is what the absolute apex of civilization is supposed to be like. This is what it means to be one of the elect, marked for an eternity on God's knees, the deity, no doubt, looking like a giant Santa.

Now I would think, and perhaps you would too, that given their certainty over their inevitable ascension to the heights of human achievement, fundamentalists (and not just our national Protestant Christian branch, but those of all stripes - Muslim, Jewish, Hindi, Catholics) would be content to live and let live. Yet when we look out over this bleeding world of ours, surprise! It is the fundamentalists of all stripes who are highly likely to harangue, slaughter, and condemn non-believers!

I don't get that. If I were walking around with a secret that held the key to all the afterlife's joys, I can imagine a number of reactions I might have. I might want to share it, to give it away. Well, forget that - the evangelical pitch-men and -women on TV ain't givin' away nothin'. I might feel compassion for those who can never partake of this treasure, and be especially kind to them. Nope, doesn't seem to be part of the program for today's fundamentalists. I might try to teach others about the treasure, to understand how they feel about not having it, engage in dialog. I might even think that maybe this treasure is what works for me and that somewhere else in the world there are people "" in fact, even possibly just about everyone! - who have their own treasure and whom I can learn from! Nope, not part of the equation for today's funda-thonists. Everyone else be damned, feared, and resented for not being as blessed as they are. Believers, send cash.

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Palin-s-Death-Committee-as-by-Barton-Kunstler-090817-218.html

But does anybody around here think that somebody who shouts out: "Keep the government out of my medicare!" would come anywhere near to understanding this?

and I don't care if fundies DON'T read this kind of thing. I do, and its intelligence and thoughtfulness makes my day. I'm proud to (cyber) know ya.