Dark Ages

The adoration of Jesus, the new god, by the Laguna gang of three, Jay Grant, Edward T. Graney, and Al Enderle and the exclusion of everything just and humane has blinded these philistines to the realities of history, their own holy book, and just plain common decency. Then in a twist of irrational zeal, in letter and column, this gang continues to press upon the people of our town a religious and political point of view which has its philosophical roots in the the Dark Ages.

Graney’s use of the bible to justify an atrocious philosophy of political morality is nothing more than blind hypocrisy. When Graney condemns that baptist preacher’s son and Blue Dog hypocrite Gary Condin and ex-president Clinton for their philandering, Graney exposed his ignorance of recent history. Graney conveniently forgets that christian-corporatist Newt Gingrich had two affairs while in Congress including one while Speaker of the House. He forgets christian-corporatist Henry Hyde, the leader of the impeach Clinton crowd, destroyed his friends marriage by sleeping with his friends wife. He forgets christian-corporatist Bob Livingston, the Louisiana Republican who was touted far and wide as Newt Gingrich’s replacement for House Speaker, had to withdraw when it was discovered he was sleeping with his wife and four of his secretaries. In past letters to the local newspaper Graney condemned Hillary Clinton and called Laura Bush a wonderful person and an example of morality restored to the White House. Tell me Mr. Graney, if Hillary had been speeding while drunk driving, ran a stop sign and broad sided another car killing its driver, would you be as kind to her as you are to Laura Bush? Clinton is a bad guy because he did not inhale that marijuana cigarette, but Scrub Bush is a wonderful man when it is known he snorted enough cocaine to blow up a dust storm in west Texas? Have you ever heard of the “shoe on the other foot test?” Your one-sided morality is based on bible thumping dramatics justifying the corporate capitalist destruction of our democracy and natural environment. Admit it Mr. Graney, what you and your fellow travelers really want is a christian-corporatist theocracy enforced by a new christian Inquisition.

Jay Grant and his fundamentalist/charismatic pals have deconstructed christianity to a set of mutually exclusive categories which are only asserted, never proven. In their philosophy of christianity there is no logic, no connection to natural history, and certainly no connection to humanity. Evidence for this warped and ossified thinking is provided by Grant in his weakly (sic) column where he writes Jews are a race rather than a religion, love of Jesus is greater than love of one’s spouse or family, evolution is nonsense, and women are nothing more than incubators. Grant’s religious philosophy is based on Calvinist greed and the primitive capitalist need to accumulate wealth as an indicator of a heavenly destination. Grant and his reactionary christian pals use their wooden ideas of love and life as a vehicle to promote hate, war, greed, and poverty. In Grant’s world view christian soldiers are sent out to defend a christian corporate state that will not provide a living wage or universal health care for its own people while invading and exploiting foreign lands peopled by poor non or “lesser” christians. It is Grant and his ilk’s brand of christianity which reveals the darkness of their, not our, collective hearts.

Turning to Al Enderle, I must ask the following: Mr. Enderle, do you really need to torture and mutilate the facts to gain christian converts? Does a christian end justify deceptive means?