The Indigestible

It’s not that the disease of extreme batshit religio-thuggery is spreading; it’s just that the meme has found new hosts, and they aren’t being shamed into the silence they should rightfully hold in the presence of their betters — that is, most of the rest of us.

For starters the goons at the Pentagon have decided it’s okay to completely ignore 200+ years of American jurisprudence; they’re allowing hearsay evidence and testimony obtained under torture to be used in Guantanamo Bay detainee trials.

So what? So read this graf.

The Pentagon has drafted a manual for upcoming detainee trials that would allow suspected terrorists to be convicted on hearsay evidence and coerced testimony and imprisoned or put to death.

Read it again after the final conditional conjunction.

Put to death. Right, killed. Killed by the United States … on hearsay evidence.

Look, if someone so obvious as OJ can walk, how can we possibly justify letting our government kill people on the questionable word of others’ mouths — or, worse, on confessions gained under torture? Hearsay and torture-derived evidence are more commonly associated with accusations of witchcraft, not terrorism.

But hey, unlike witches, terrorists are real, right? And they’re everywhere, sneaking around, secretly plotting to kill good folk in the name of some dark force or entity or other.

Nothing like witches* at all.

And speaking of dissimilar madnesses, we have this from an Australian Muslim cleric, in a DVD given to Muslim youth:

“We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam,” said [Sheik Feiz Mohammed] in the video, reported Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.

“Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid. Put in their soft, tender hearts the zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom,” he said.

Contrast the foregoing with this commentary about a “Bible camp” attended by American kids.

“I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places,” [Pastor Becky Fisher] said. “Because, excuse me, we have the truth.”

“A lot of people die for God,” one camper said, “and they’re not afraid.”

“We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” said another, “only in a funner way.”

Fundamentalist religion, like witch panic, is communicable, and is a world-girding disease. Those who suffer from it are simply wrong. They do not hold opinions that are worthy of respect. They are not to be coddled or treated kindly, as though they are merely expressing a preference for chocolate rather than vanilla.

They are diseased, and they aim to infect others, and they aim to infest this planet like the filth-ridden cockroaches they are. They’re prepared to kill to do it, and they’re prepared to die, and they’re prepared to send children into death to achieve their ends. This is their declared agenda.

There’s nothing harmless about any of this. Whether claiming Islam or Christianity as the foundation, this behavior is simply insane, and is not to be tolerated on a civilized planet. And with any luck at all, we’re beginning to realize it.

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* More accurately, the 17th-century idea of what witches did.