It’s that time of year again, everyone. When everyone gathers together at their family homes to commence the War on Christmas. Via memeorandum, here is the opening salvo in this year’s battle, which I will call the “War on Christmas, Godwin Edition”:
Nazi Germany celebrated Christmas without Christ with the help of swastika tree baubles, ‘Germanic’ cookies and a host of manufactured traditions, a new exhibition has shown.
The way the celebration was gradually taken over and exploited for propaganda purposes by Hitler’s Nazis is detailed in a new exhibition.
Rita Breuer has spent years scouring flea markets for old German Christmas ornaments.
She and her daughter Judith developed a fascination with the way Christmas was used by the atheist Nazis, who tried to turn it into a pagan winter solstice celebration.
Umm, it kind of used to be a pagan celebration. It wasn’t too long ago that Christian ministers were fighting the concept of the Christmas tree, it was so clearly a Pagan leftover.
I fully expect this news story to make Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly cry tonight. I’m not sure how they will tie it to ACORN and the Obama administration, but you know they will.
Zifnab
I’m sure the wingers will get back around to that eventually.
“Obama lighting the Christmas Tree in the liberal cesspool of Times Square? How is he NOT a commie-llama-super-atheio-Muslim?”
Tara the antisocial social worker
It’s George Soros’s fault!
Interrobang
“Atheist” Nazis — yeah, the ones with “God With Us” on their belt buckles. Sounds real atheist to me, yup yup, uh huh.
Also, you know, unlike most of these yahoos spouting off about Hitler, I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, albeit in translation, and the guy just didn’t shut up about God the whole time. He was also certainly some kind of religious vitalist, which isn’t exactly atheism-compatible, either.
Morons.
Max
This time of year makes me envious of the Witnesses’.
ThatPirateGuy
Jeremiah 10:2-4 appears to prohibit the practice of Christmas Trees.
2: Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.
3: For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.
4: They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
Be not surprised.
Joshua Norton
Sorry, but the Nazi’s were NOT atheists. They used religion as a club just like any other good fascist ideology.There’s a lot of old propaganda posters that use religious icons to make a point. Such as themes along the lines of Nazi soldiers holding hands with angels to protect the “Fatherland” against the Jews and such.
Max
By the way, I’m listening to the Holder testimony on CapHill and he really is smart. The GOP’ers (Sessions, Hatch, etal) really look dumb in comparison. They are asking him questions that even I know the answers to.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This year decorate your pagan winter festival tree with acorns, to show solidarity with both the ancient Druids and the shock troops of contemporary Liberalfascism. It’s a twofer.
LD50
The atheist Nazis who put GOTT MIT UNS on all their soldiers’ belt buckles. Those atheists.
Ann B. Nonymous
The “moderate Republican” Massachusetts wingnut brother of an old college friend on Facebook is already slamming the liberals about whining about kids wearing Christmas tree sweaters to public school or some such. Something he saw on Scarborough, I think.
(He’s not completely ignorant: hates Sarah Palin, but thinks Biden is just as bad, and doesn’t think John McCain showed a terminal error of judgment in choosing her. And he loathes Obama, apparently for being his superior in every single way.)
He’s not as bad as the upstate New Yorker “moderate Republican” relatives of Facebook friends, who can barely censor themselves from using openly racist language. You can smell the rageohol (maybe not even rage) on these people. They’ll die younger than they should, which I still think is a bad thing, even though they’re on Team Evil.
techno
@Interrobang:
The Gott mit Uns belt buckle was from World War 1. Yeah I know–hard to keep them apart. Not.
Comrade Jake
They’ll talk about how Obama is planning to put an Acorn on top of the WH Christmas tree. They know this because people have been talking about it on the internets.
Zifnab
@Interrobang: I’m not even sure why the hell it matters? The very premise is absurd. We’ve been throwing kitche on Christmas Trees since the sixties. I remember doing one of those popsicle stick and yarn Christmas ornaments in elementary school as a gift for my mom.
It’s a sad mix of the same old whiny tired arguments about “No True Christian!” tied in with glib ignorance and shock at a practice that has been mainstream for generations.
So the whole “Are they / aren’t they atheists” Nazi argument is even more moot than usual. What you put on your Christmas Tree has never had any serious correlation with whether or not you are sufficiently pious.
Comrade Tudor
Ooh Ooh, I know the reason behind why we have Christmas trees…And yes, it’s Pagan to the hilt.
Way back when, like 3600 years ago or so, the holy man of the village would go out on the winter solstice, find a tree on a hill, and light it on fire to bring the sun back. And you know what? It worked every time.
cleek
hey, you know them, too ?
i reconnected with a high-school friend last week, on FB. then he started in with the “Obamacare will kill us all” shit, and i had to ignore him. and that bummed me out so much that i’ve been avoiding FB ever since.
C Nelson Reilly
@LD50:
GOTT MIT UNS sounds like a prediction for a Romney run in 2012
LD50
@techno: That’s not what Wikipedia says — are they wrong?
joe from Lowell
I think that exhibit is pretty cool.
I like the Iron Cross ornaments meant to celebrate the beginning of WW1.
That’s just nuts.
Leelee for Obama
@Max: I didn’t catch the stunned deer in the headlights looks, I was too busy listening to Holder. If I was from New England, I’d say he was wicked smart. Oh hell, I’ll say it anyway. Eric Holder is wicked smart.
LD50
@techno: This seems to present problems for that theory:
http://www.redrat.net/thoughts/iraq/gott_mit_uns.jpg
Why oh why
They hate us for our Christmas trees.
First they came for Christmas Baubles…
Svensker
@LD50:
Yabut, anyone who isn’t a fundie is actually an atheist. Dincha no dat?
The Puritans didn’t believe in celebrating Christmas because they considered it pagan. Quakers still don’t celebrate Christmas (for different reasons), though prolly the people who wrote that article wouldn’t consider modern-day Quakers to be Christians.
The Moar You Know
Damn, the year flies by so fast. Time for the war already?
I’ll get my gun, gas can, and ACLU card.
joe from Lowell
Interrobang,
You made it all the way through Mein Kampf?
I only made it about 2/3 of the way through before giving up. I just couldn’t go on.
You’d think that such a book would be interesting, in a dark, insane sort of way, but it was just so godawful boring.
Reading that book is like listening to an anti-semitic insurance salesman tell you about his childhood and the dreams he’s been having. For six straight hours.
Comrade Darkness
And that is different from this, how? Well, okay, it’s probably uglier than the nazi ones. I’ll grant you that.
And the nazis…. SO atheist they arranged for the state to collect taxes for the church. That’s exactly what every atheist I know most hopes for. We should ask santa, maybe.
Xanthippas
I don’t really have a problem with this story, except maybe that reference to Christmas as a pagan holiday which is a little ignorant historically. In fact it seems interesting to me to compare the deliberate effort on the part of the Nazis to de-Christianize the holiday to the hyperbolic efforts of right-wing culture warriors to overly-Christianize the holiday by scouring the land for any insufficiently Christ-centric celebration of the holiday (a critique of the ornaments hanging from the WH lawn tree would not be out of order for them.)
And I would say I just Godwinized myself with that comparison, but you started it Mr. Cole.
Joshua Norton
Nice try. But a picture’s worth a thousand words.
cleek
Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t do Christmas (or Easter, or birthdays)
The Grand Panjandrum
@Comrade Darkness:
Faith based initiatives, in a manner of speaking?
OT: Anyone else find it odd that Andrew Sullivan hasn’t updated his blog for more than 18 hours?
RSA
Nothin’ but Baby Jesus ornaments on my Christmas tree, which I’ve pruned into the shape of a crucifix.
demimondian
@Xanthippas: Actually, no, it isn’t. Christmas itself was scheduled to run across Saturnalia — and, coincidentally, to end right *after* Saturnalia, so that right thinking Christians could celebrate -both- the end of the fast while their pagan brethren were recovering from the binge.
Io, Saturnalia!
MattF
A little background on the no-kidding Puritan War on Christmas.
Sentient Puddle
Because Godwin’s Law was violated at the very beginning, I don’t think it’s possible for any new comments to be considered a new violation. I believe we need to exploit this!
LD50
Um, is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that anyone who still puts “Not.” after their statements as a rhetorical device is pretty much always full of shit?
Comrade Darkness
@Joshua Norton: I like the “Schlageter pin badge” the best. Christian cross, rising sun swastika rearing its head with a nod to the globe and cross mary is frequently holding in statuary. How many symbols can we cram on one ugly cast chunk of metal? It’s like Bauhaus with a really bad hangover.
tess
They’ll say it’s Obama’s fault because it isn’t “in his blood” to recognize Christmas.
Those “Pray for Obama” death psalm mousepads, mugs, and bumper stickers on Rachel last night entirely freaked me out. What is wrong with these people?
Col. Klink
@ The Grand Panjandrum (29)
OTT, but I was wondering the same thing.
Did Sully have a complete Palin burn out? Is he doing the index of her book for her? Could Andrew, in one single night, actually write a book about Palin longer and more accurate than her entire propaganda office?
I have a feeling that when Sully returns we are going to be in for one hell of a Churchillian ‘I will fight her on the beaches – I will never surrender’ kind of post.
Rough Hands
”Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord’s work.” – Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf
Xanthippas
@demimondian
What I meant was it seemed ignorant on the part of the writer to not be aware that Christmas is partly a pagan holiday. And while it’s also inept to state that Nazis were atheists, it’s entirely true that Nazi ideology subverted everything, religion included, to the State.
bemused
@cleek:
I know local JW’s who do a lot of shopping during the holidays taking advantage of the sales. A bargain is a bargain.
New Yorker
As an elitist, east coast, Ivy League liberal, I just write “happy saturnalia” on the Christmas cards I send to people, although not my 94-year-old devout Catholic grandmother.
LD50
@bemused: Do they go out for Chinese food on the 25th?
JohnR
@Joshua Norton:
There you go again with your silly liberal “facts” and “thinking”. Real Americans know what they know.
El Cid
You libruls may not like us Real Americans like Say-ruh celebrating the day 13 million years ago when Santa brought the baby Jesus to his mother Mary down the chimney of the Inn and Rudolph then carried the precious child to the manger in the barn where the Bumble then put the star on top the Christmas tree, but us Real Christians are gonna do it anyway.
Why oh why
@The Grand Panjandrum: Palin overdose?
kormgar
The…err…Nazi’s were Christian as well…being an Atheist in Nazi Germany was a great way to end up in prison.
Max
@Leelee for Obama: Sen. Kyl is a douchebag. He really fired Holder up and Holder shut him down, but Kyl is too stupid to understand.
JGabriel
Oh those nutty wingers! Newsmax (via TPM) is pushing Palin-Beck for 2012:
The possibilities boggle the mind …
.
JohnR
Oh, and I need to write off to that woman and see if she can put me in touch with somewhere I can buy a new swastika tree-topper; my old one broke last Christmas when the bolt of lightning hit the tree (inside the house! what a surprise!)
Beauzeaux
I so did not need the sound of Johnny Mathis stuck in my head this morning.
bemused
@LD50:
lol. It’s not Christmas without the 24 hour marathon showing of Christmas Story.
Svlad Jelly
You people just don’t understand. The great historical scholar Jonah Goldberg has proved empirically that fascism is an ideology of The Left and therefore invariably linked to Godless Communism. Ipso Facto, the Nazis were atheists.
kid bitzer
johnny mathis? yuck indeedy.
listen to andy williams’ version of it instead. he knocks it out of the park.
Evinfuilt
Nazi Atheists??? Really??? Has this person ever read a history book ever?
WOW!!!
Then again, for most of the home-schooled Christiantists they can just interchange Stalin, Mao and Hitler at will, without thought.
The Pagans want Christmas back, the Atheists will take Festivus and be happy. Christians, can you please come up with at least one original idea or Holiday? Sheeesh, its the most unoriginal story of all time, not the greatest.
Comrade Darkness
@New Yorker: I’m one up on you. I go with Have a Joyful Solstice: the Real Reason for the Season.
oklahomo
Atheist Nazis? Did these people think to maybe ask the current Pope for his take on this?
Brick Oven Bill
Here is how it will be tied to the Obama Administration.
Christianity threatened Hitler by its compassion. Christianity threatens Barack on a personal level, as the concept of a higher power providing guidance and salvation, offers a competing ideology to Barack’s image of ‘Hope’ with a big picture of him above it.
Barack continues to see himself as the man standing before the masses of Germans (those Germans waiting to attend a musical event following Barack’s speech) speaking with electronic reverb to make him sound God-like. This is a symptom of his Type 1 psychological disorder (Denial).
This is why Barack declared America to not be a Christian nation. He really is messed up in the head. Unfortunately for Barack, he has made many statements to which metrics can be assigned and, although he is largely protected now, he will be introduced to a concept here shortly called ‘accountability’.
Faced with this concept, he will try to reconcile his statements, and the reality of the people asking him questions that he cannot answer. This will cause confusion, and then more denial that will become increasingly difficult to deny.
This will then cause anger and the yelling and screaming (‘They hate me!’) will no longer be contained within the walls of the White House. But instead of Michelle crying with compassion at the yelling and screaming, his ideological opponents will laugh.
This is when we will have our Jack Nicholson Moment.
Comrade Dread
Nah, they might make a passing comment or two, but I’m sure the bigger meme amongst the talk show gasholes will be some racist jokes about Kwanza, possibly with some fried chicken references thrown in for good measure.
It has the bonus measure of letting them feign innocence and shriek about political correctness when people get pissed off about it.
New Yorker
OTTTT, but I too am concerned about Sully. I have this image in my head of something like the beginning of “Pink Floyd: The Wall” where Sully is slouched in a chair, with a burnt-out cigarette in his hand, staring into space, while copies of “Going Rogue” lie scattered in heaps around the apartment.
Legalize
I’ll be doing my part by saying the word “holidays” instead of Xmas at every available opportunity. Also. When I DO refer to “Xmas” I’ll always write and say the “X” instead of “Christ”.
Yes, I’m in my 30s. And yes, I find this hilarious.
Notorious P.A.T.
Someone MUST BE feeding him his testimony. Just like Obama couldn’t have written his books by himself. “Those people” just aren’t smart enough, etc etc etc.
/wingnut
Ken
Christmas, in the United States, is a bunch of different holidays and traditions all pureed together. The War on Christmas actually involves the one I mentally tag the “Feast of Mammon” – the problem being that shopkeepers, as good capitalists, don’t want to discourage anyone from buying. That’s also why the mall decorations are mostly from the “Feast of Mammon” and “Solstice Yule” strains, and not the “Christ Mass.”
Ann B. Nonymous
@cleek: They really think they’re moderates! By the standards of the current Republican Party, they probably are — clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right — but it has to do with their self-image of being reasonable people… who go into a freak-out about mixed marriages or paying school district taxes or really, anything that might harsh their depressed upstate ethnic white dear-God-why-am-I-living-here-it-must-be-God’s-plan mellow.
When they see Bill O’Reilly talking about the War on Christmas, they think he’s one of them, instead of a weird urban reprobate who inserted a vibrator in himself while drunk-dialing his executive producer. (But Glen Beck is still a bridge too far, for the moment.)
SpotWeld
Um.. B.O.B.. he did declare the US to be a Christian Nation.. but just not exclusivly.
The US has a made kinda a big deal about non-exclusivity.
We kinda like it that way.
ellaesther
Oookayyyy. Gonna throw something out there, and then duck.
First of all, I’m a Jew. We all know this. And I no more believe that there is a “War on Christmas” (TM) than I believe in Santa Claus.
BUT, I am — disturbed isn’t the right word. Maybe unhappy? — by/over the fact that our concern over the separation of church and state (which I am all for) means that American kids grow up having no real, working knowledge of one of the founding stories and cultural bedrocks of Western civilization.
Christianity, its images, its language, its ideas (good and bad) are woven all through every piece of our society, and we are not served by not knowing this. I believe all kids should have to study the Christian bible in school, I believe that we should be teaching the basics of Christianity in our social studies classes, I believe English classes should include study of the Christian tropes on which so much of English literature turns.
I also know that there is no way to do this without bringing hellfire down on everyone who ever tries to do so (unless, maybe, it’s at the high school level), but you know what? Aside from anything else: Kids with that kind of education would be better able to withstand the lies that Christianists tell about Christianity, your Pat Robertsons and your Rick Warrens.
But at the very least, I find it (funny? odd?) that a lot of the gentile kids in my kids’ classrooms probably know more about Judaism — because I come in at the holidays with treats and stories and explanations — than they do about Christianity, the faith that most of them, at least nominally, share.
John PM
@New Yorker: #59
I think that Sully’s disappearance also has something to do with Palin; the last time he disappered without explanation was right after his Trig-a-polooza last year. He is probably upset that “Going Rogue” is on the bestseller list while his book on Oakeshott is not.
bemused
Oh man, BoB is talking about denial again.
Comrade Dread
Of course X is an old abbreviation for Christ, so you’re not really changing it to something more secular.
cleek
@New Yorker:
are there any queers in the theater tonight?
get them up against the wall.
that one looks Jewish, and that one’s a coon!
who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
there’s one smoking a joint and another with spots!
if i had my way, i’d have all of you shot!
Notorious P.A.T.
Pet Peeve time: Godwin’s Law doesn’t say what you should or should not do, it just says what someone will do if given enough time.
Andy
ACORN, Obama and Nazis all have five letters. All three are tied together by the letter A, which happens to be the first letter in both Saul Alinsky’s and Bill Ayers’ names.
It’s all really very obvious.
Time to get out the chalk, Glenn. (Also five letters. . . .)
Evinfuilt
@Xanthippas:
You actually can’t Godwin a thread about actual Nazi’s, thankfully :)
This Christmas I recommend celebrating the birth of any of the approximately 20 gods previously born on the 25th. Personally I’ll go with the Original, Osiris, his son Horus was also born on the 25th and with Isis they make the original Holy trinity.
Legalize
True. But “X” upsets wingers regardless.
Joshua Norton
Ditto. And screaming “Godwins Law” at the mere whiff of mentioning Nazi Germany nullifies Godwins Law – so says Godwin himself.
Notorious P.A.T.
Hey, Bill! Bill! Over here! Over here, Bill! Hitler sent Christian chaplains into battle with his troops! You can see pictures of their uniforms here:
http://nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm
delk
But you got to love how The Gap just keeps toying with the American Family Association!
Joshua Norton
Pretty much the way it threatens the “compassionate” theocratic Christ-bots in this country.
Sentient Puddle
@Notorious P.A.T.: True, but the commonly-accepted corollary to it is that whoever brings it up first loses the argument. Me, I’m of the opinion that it’s not really worth it to make the distinction.
Notorious P.A.T.
I agree, it should be in high school. Grade school is too early to expose children to such things.
Comrade Darkness
celebration was gradually taken over and exploited for propaganda purposes
What? The Nazis used the emotional crowbar of Christianity to achieve their political ends? Imagine. Good thing that never happens here. It’d be ridiculous if, say, tens of millions of people could be denied health care coverage because a handful of fundamentalists want the government to ignore its own laws.
ChrisS
@cleek:
Being in upstate NY myself, I think we all have the same friends.
joe from Lowell
Umwhut?
The story of Jesus is so woven through every piece of our society that nobody know it?
You’re Jewish, and you clearly know it. Was it taught to you in public school?
There are a lot of things we need to worry about in this country. People not knowing the story of Jesus is not one of them.
Vince CA
I love using X as an abbriation for Xtian, or X, or my friend Xtine. Why? Well, it does piss off the wingers, but so what? It saves on typing, my friend’s name sounds awesome if you sound it out (Eks-teen, sounds so super hero).
But the best part is because it’s classical. Our X looks a hell of a lot like the Greek chi (classical chei), and it’s the first letter of Christos if it were spelled out in the Greek alphabet. Since Christ is a Greek word, it’s fun to make it look more Greek.
For fun: When a winger gets his panties into a bunch over the abbreviation, explain to them that it’s ‘deferential’ to the Greek origins of the word (and the new Testament, yadda yadda yadda). They get real quiet. They still don’t like it, but since they don’t know their own religion from pagan fertility festival, it smokes their brain. Good times I’ve had with that one.
Notorious P.A.T.
That’s awesome )
trollhattan
By God (heh-heh) I like pie too!
ellaesther
@Notorious P.A.T.: Ok — but I have to ask (as Devil’s advocate, not as someone picking a fight): Does that mean that they’re too young to deal with me coming in at Rosh Hashana with apples and honey and talking about how the “Jewish New Year” is, in Jewish tradition, really a celebration of God’s creation of the world?
Musing now… I suppose it could be said that me talking about a non-dominant religious tradition is easier to deal with than asking grade school kids to deal critically with the societal aspects of the dominant religion. Hmmm…..
EEH
hoi polloi
Hello! Acorn’s are from deciduous trees whereas Christmas trees are conifers! Or should I say, Christmas trees were conifers! If Obamasoros has his way we’ll be worshiping an oak tree instead of bowing before a nice Douglas fir.
These things matter, damnit!
Bulworth
I’ve never understood the Atheist-Nazi claims. Whatever Hitler’s own views, Germany was an extremely Christian country, perhaps the most Christian, if such a thing can be said, of any country, at least in Europe. It was the central theatre of the Reformation. Nazi Germany had strong Christian support in the practical carrying out of its agenda, and not a few Christian clergy supported the Nazi regime.
Comrade Darkness
@Legalize: That is the funnest part of it, though. They are insulted only because they are ignoramuses. It works perfectly.
If they are going to be picky they shouldn’t use the Greek but the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ or Masiahmas.
They Live By Night
Does this mean the Jews and the Nazis are allies in the War on Christmas?
Comrade Darkness
@EEH: Try pointing out the X in every Xtian fish people slap on their cars.
MattF
OT: Sullivan is reeling.
LD50
@They Live By Night: Well, since Obama is simultaneously a Stalinist *and* a Nazi, I can only assume that the Nazis and the Communists were allies in WW2. (Or, WW1, as Techno would have it.)
pika
@The Grand Panjandrum: Did you see Sully’s recent update? The three of them are holed up somewhere, Going Rogue divided into three parts, and they’re fact checking every inch. No food, no clothing, no water–only beagles–until they’re done. He’s really got to get his own siren. Wait–oops, that’s Sarah. He can’t resist.
Martin
Everyone knows the foundations of Christmas. We celebrate Jesus’s birth by recognizing his efforts to resist the spread of Roman social!sm. Jesus recognized the importance of the free market and trickle-down economics, and advocated that his followers buy gifts for people that they don’t need both to provide economic stimulus, but also to reduce the cost of living for poor people by being resold on Craigs List. We symbolize Jesus’ fight against the Roman organization GLANS by cutting down the trees and prominently displaying the kills to show our resolve against corrupt taxpayer funded organizations for the neighbors to see. Each year, families gather for a feast and the annual loyalty interrogation – to determine which family members are sufficiently loyal to the cause and which are traitors to be shunned or clubbed to death with a recently opened Barbie.
Joshua Norton
@Bulworth:
Ya think?
http://nobeliefs.com/images/NaziPriestsSaluteHitler.jpg
Sentient Puddle
@Bulworth:
It’s easy. Whenever Republicans see something they don’t like associated with them in any way, shape or form, they go all out with the No True Scotsman.
See also: “Bush wasn’t a real conservative.”
LD50
Caribou Barbie has finally done it: she’s made Sully’s brain short out:
MikeJ
With more birtherism hints in his post. He really needs to retire or something.
Sentient Puddle
Anyone want to place odds on Sully committing suicide before the end of it? I mean, I’m not entirely sure he knows what he’s getting himself into.
Sarcastro
@ellaesther: I think you hit the nail on the head with the word “critically”. I’m all for a robust academic debate on the influence and origins of Christianity, but many, many Christians find a critical study of their dogma and scripture to be anathema… especially in regards to young children.
Eric U.
@Legalize: I like the variations of the Christian fish car magnet that have a cross for an eye and say “Christ” in the border of the fish. Made by the Department of Redundancy Department. The connection between the simple fish and Christ isn’t good enough for some people.
Citizen_X
Just to shoot a few more fish in the barrel, here’s* a picture of another of those atheist Nazis.
But why, oh why, does that barrel keep getting repopulated? Is it some kind of wingnut loaves-and-fishes miracle?
[*No endorsement of the crank views of the host site for that image intended.]
Xenos
@pika:
Sully has been sucked past the Palin Even Horizon. The book is so dense that not even light can escape.
I knew we were in for something special when he noted that the book repeats the story about her taking a long flight while in labor. I never would want to get into her management of her pregnancies, but now she has brought the whole issue back into public, as some sort of heroic story. Sully will accuse her of attempted infanticide, and all hell will break loose.
MikeJ
Sully just can’t help himself when it comes to telling women what pregnancy is like.
Morbo
The Nazis co-opted all sorts of religious and spiritual iconography from all over the world. What they really strove for in borrowing all those crosses was to replace people’s devotion to Christ with a devotion to Hitler their Teutonic hero. They weren’t so much Christian as cynical manipulators of people’s pre-existing religious beliefs and cultural histories. Calling them either Christian or atheist seems to miss the point to me, YMMV.
John PM
@LD50: #99
Osirus bless Sully for taking on this task. I watched the Oprah interview with Palin and I now understand why people say they want to gouge their eyes or ears out/slam their head against a brick wall, etc. Mercifully, it was the quietest Oprah audience I have ever heard, so I take that as meaning that the audience was not buying what Palin was selling.
arguingwithsignposts
@LD50:
I smell another round of Sullyfied birtherism.
Legalize
After Sully is finished with the Palin tome, he’ll be sufficiently brain damaged to sit with Gordon Liddy on Hardball and discuss the Palin / Obama race in 2012. The two of them will blather on about something or other for 15 minutes and Tweety will take it all in, finally declaring Liddy and Sully to be the experts in whatever the fuck. Liddy, Sully and Tweety will all be unshaven and in their bathrobes. This will be high, high television.
ellaesther
@joe from Lowell: I’m talking about literature, about turns of phrases, ideas that lie at the root of our founding documents — not just (or even primarily) Jesus, but Paul and Mary and the prophets and notions of justice and on and on. (And a caveat: I know, but I’m a convert, who came from a pretty serious church background. My spiritual journey brought me to Judaism, but it didn’t erase my memory…!)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
“War on Christmas, Godwin Edition”
Sounds like a great tag to me.
Comrade Darkness
@joe from Lowell: @ellaesther:
Christianity, its images, its language, its ideas (good and bad) are woven all through every piece of our society, and we are not served by not knowing this.
So is Greek Mythology and Grimms Fairy Tales, Mother Goose and Shakespeare and a whole bunch of other things. They are the stories we continue to tell each other because we find them compelling as well as a convenient shorthand for larger concepts we want to convey in speech or symbols.
What’s really pissing off the Christians is that their story is just one of many woven into how we think of the world, rather than the only one. Christianity has never condoned competition. Hence the reason they go ballistic when there are new competitive mythical heros (Harry Potter) and why they see no problem with reinventing their own lore (Jesus didn’t really like the poor, he loves the rich and war on the brown people). Because it’s just another story to serve their view of the world. And if not, it gets changed. The really amusing part about that is, they blame the left for damaging their myth, when they are doing the job just fine on their own. Projection, it’s not just for breakfast.
Sentient Puddle
@Legalize: Ah, fair point. It may be the media gatekeepers sending him to Room 101.
ellaesther
@Martin: HA! BWAHAhahahahaha!! Whoo!
/wipes tear
HA!
Man, that was almost too good! There should be a job in this for you. Quick, find Martin a job in whatever it is that we call what he did here!
MikeJ
Why? He’s a birther nitwit. LGM is doing excellent work in the book review department. So far one review by the staff Alaskan and another review complaining about the requirement for light armour for rogues.
kay
@Legalize:
He drives me crazy, but I think the unapologetic Palin obsession is interesting, and weirdly honest and brave. He’s not going to quit.
Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin is much more interesting than Sarah Palin herself. She should thank him. He’s given her some depth.
Nutella
@ellaesther:
The study of comparative religion would be a healthy thing to include in public education but the provision of it assumes that Xtianists will let it be actual study and actual comparison. They won’t. Two minutes after we let anything like ‘The Bible as Literature’ into public schools they’ll be running compulsory full-immersion baptisms in the classroom.
So you’re right in theory but in practice the battle over the separation of church and state has to be fought at a pretty basic level in the schools.
Comrade Darkness
@arguingwithsignposts:
I smell another round of Sullyfied birtherism.
Wait, are we back to Trig again already?
John Sears
@LD50: Or a huge Wayne’s World fan.
New Yorker
I see everyone has seen Sully’s update, and I’m actually kind of frightened that he’s gone past some sort of Point of No Return, Joseph Conrad-style. I’m afraid that the DC police blotter is going to have a report about some bald, bearded guy running up and down 18th street in his underwear, wearing war paint and screaming about Palin’s pregnancy and insisting that he and Levi will save civilization from this woman.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Didn’t ya hear? Hillary is personally coming to take away your guns. I believe she’s scheduled to be at your place next Thursday around 9am.
I have a friend who’s stoopid Republican husband believes that. Uses it as his excuse to never vote for a Democrat.
There’s a divorce we’d gladly help facilitate.
soonergrunt
George Washington crossed the Delaware river to attack the Hessian mercenary force at the Battle of Trenton in 1777, Christmas being more popular with Germans than with English or Americans at the time. (Why did Washington hate Murica?!)
In most of the world people worked on Christmas eve and on Christmas day as recently as the 1860s. It wasn’t even a Federal holiday until 1870.
ellaesther
@Sarcastro: Hence the impossibility of doing it I guess. I did actually study the Christian Bible as literature in high school (30 years ago) and I don’t know that schools can get away with that at this point in American history (good lord, I wrote “get away with that”! As if it’s some sort of morally ambiguous effort that must be conducted in the dark! I believe I just made my point for me!).
I find it very — odd? baffling? infuriating? I sure am at a loss for descriptors today! — that 30 years after I was in high school, the country (IMHO, and, I suspect that of many here!) is actually now more retrograde on questions of freedom of conscience and intellectual curiosity.
Ugh.
John Sears
@ellaesther: I agree with studying the history of Christianity, and its basic belief structures, but actually reading the bible? Largely a waste of time.
Fuck. I’ve tried, multiple times, reading it as an Atheist, and it is just the most insane, convoluted, self-contradictory, violent, rambling, disjointed thing I’ve ever set my eyes to.
Including those websites about lizard alien invaders hiding in the Hollow Earth.
ellaesther
@Nutella: Damn it, I guess that means I have to educate my own damn children. Shit! I hate that!
(No, uh, seriously, we talk about this shit. But we’re very geeky in my house, so, yeah).
Nutella
@arguingwithsignposts:
Fixed. The dictionary has a word for that.
John Sears
@ellaesther: Also, why is it the State’s job to teach anyone anything about their own religion, outside of objective historical figures and events?
LD50
@soonergrunt:
I assume when O’Reilly talks about ‘taking back Christmas’, he means restoring it to his idealized vision of how his neighbors celebrated it in 1940.
Wile E. Quixote
@EEH
So are those websites that I go to that advertise “XXX Action” extra holy? How does that work anyways? Does XXX = “Christ + Christ + Christ” or is it “Christ * Christ * Christ” or perhaps “Christ ** Christ ** Christ”.
John Sears
@Nutella: Heh. Study of comparitive religion is interesting for atheists. To us it’s like reading from the DSM-IV.
‘Oh, so THESE people believe in a slightly different invisible man in the sky than THOSE people, and so they’ve been killing each other for a thousand years over a narrow swath of marginally arable semi-desert. Really? Wow.’
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Legalize: That’s one of the funniest – and scariest – things I’ve read in a long while.
LD50
It’s kind of like watching an argument over what color unicorns’ fur is.
4Gy
@LD50: Um….nothing to add, really, I’ve just always wanted to reply to one of LD50’s comments using the name 4Gy.
ellaesther
@John Sears: Well, in its defense — and that of all holy writ — it wasn’t meant to be read like that.
I mean: I agree, about the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and I’ll throw in the Qur’an, too, while we’re at it — but that wasn’t how these Books were conceived. They set down what was an oral tradition, and were meant to be used in a context of worship, often among people who couldn’t read themselves. Many Muslim men memorize their book in its entirety, but even that indicates the oral tradition, and is meant more of an expression of the Qur’an’s innate holiness and the Islamic urge to embody that holiness, rather than an aid to remembering good stories.
If you really want to study the texts, it’s best to approach it that way: As study. With another book alongside to help. But sit down and read straight through? That’s a recipe for head-desking, that is!
Wile E. Quixote
@kay
The Daily Dish your source for Hot XXX (or is that “ChristChristChrist”), Sullivan on Palin action. More Sullivan on Palin action than you can shake a hockey stick (or your copy of “The Extremely Boring Writings of Michael Oakeshott”) at!
Legalize
I don’t disagree. It’s totally interesting and I’m glad he’s doing it because I suppose someone has to. At the same time, I really do believe that if one tries to analyze the thoughts bouncing around in Palin’s head, one is doomed to driving one’s self batshit. I agree with others who have compared this to a “Heart of Darkness” moment for Sully. I don’t know if Sully is prepared to admit that what he is looking into is a deep form of mental illness. I don’t know that he’s prepared to examine the nonsense he’s guaranteed to uncover.
Maus
pagans = atheists to this lot.
ellaesther
@John Sears: Well, that’s what I’m envisioning in my utopia: Not taught as religion, but taught as culture. (I like the dreamspace inside my head. Care to wander its lovely gardens with me…?)
Violet
For some reason, I just love that Sully is taking Sarah Palin’s book so seriously. It’s a ridiculous fluff piece, not even written by her, to hype her celebrity and make her some money. Of course it’s going to be a trainwreck. It’s as if Paris Hilton tried to write a Serious Book about her time in the slammer.
But Sully treats it as An Important Work. He refuses to let it go. And it’s probably a good thing – at least someone is holding that nitwit accountable. But his single mindedness is just kind of fun to watch.
John Sears
@LD50: I could get into that.
I say it’s white, like a titanium dioxide white, but fluorescent too, so that in visible light it sort of glows.
Molly
@Sarcastro: “I think you hit the nail on the head with the word “critically”. I’m all for a robust academic debate on the influence and origins of Christianity, but many, many Christians find a critical study of their dogma and scripture to be anathema… especially in regards to young children.”
Correct.
What I think we miss in all of this…when we talk about Jesus being woven into our society, as well as the history of Christianity and Paganism, is that none of these things are new, they’re different ways humans have tried to make sense of their reality over the ages. I think if we teach religion in schools (which I agree with), it should be focusing on those core things: life, death, society, the individual, and all of the images and rituals over time that have grappled with those questions of who we are, how we came into being, why, and what death means.
But too many Christians need to think their religion is the only right and unique way to answer those questions. They will not look at the commonalities, their history, the origin of Christian rituals, and even the origin of the Christ motif. It’s a threat. As a Christian myself, I don’t see why it should be. I have a paradigm that speaks to me. I don’t have to be “right.” I love seeing the druidic roots of our rituals, I love knowing there have been “Christ figures” across time, I love knowing all different cultures have taught love and compassion and charity.
So, I say teach it in public schools, but teach the facts. There have been stories of virgin births and sons descended from gods and resurrection stories in our common lexicon since humans began to capture their stories. And heaven forbid we teach there’s not a lot of historical evidence that Jesus existed, outside of the writings of his followers.
And Christmas is pagan. So is Easter. So is Halloween. Guess what? If those ideas can shake someone’s faith, they need to build it on something a bit more solid.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Expect many comparisons of how Obama stands near/looks at the Baby Jesus Tree to former presidents.
aimai
I’ve got to disagree with Ellasther–the problem isn’t that kids who are nominally christian don’t know their own religion. If they are nominally or actually christian they ought to learn that stuff at home. Its not the public school’s place to treat everyone as a default christian if their own families/sects can’t manage to educate them properly.
Besides, the reason public schools don’t “teach the bible” is that there isn’t one bible, and certainly not one interpretation of christianty that is “woven through” anything, let alone our history as a people. The last people who want to lose control over the interpretation of hte text are christians. They’d fight it tooth and nail.
It would be very valuable to all our children to have a thorough grounding in world religions/mythology and the great literature of the great religious traditions but, again, the Christian ma jority would never permit it. Because g-d forbid that Christian children should find out that Jesus’s compassion is exceeded by Buddha’s, or that Christmas is really Saturnalia and the BVM really just an avatar of every other mother goddess previous.
aimai
Anoniminous
Just once I’d like to read an article by a evangelicalistic Fundie demonstrating knowledge of the religion they are all het-up about.
JUST. ONCE!
Ya know, showing they’ve read Tommy (Aquinas) or one of the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil, Greg Naz, or Greg Ny) or Auggie-doggie or Eckhart or Duns Scotus or …. oh hell, I don’t know … somebody whose intellectual capability extends past, “Du-uh?”
“The scandel of the evangelical mind is there is not much of an evangelical mind” — Prof. Mark Noll an evangelical.
Joe Bleau
ellaesther, I think that the word that you are looking for is concerned.
I kid, I kid. However, I don’t agree with your post. Not that I favor suppression or censorship of the Bible or the history of Christianity – in theory, anyway, it’d be perfectly OK to teach it in its proper historical context (which, as you suggest, will never ever ever happen. Can you imagine a public school teacher getting away with teaching Bart Ehrman, or the goings-on at the First Council of Nicaea?).
However, it’s well past time that we stop pandering to the Christian zealots who like to pretend that there is anything sacred, or even original, about their little death cult. As you doubtless are aware, the morality, the mythology, the eschatology and semiotics of Christianity were all shamelessly cribbed from earlier traditions. Since Constantine, their influence has mostly spread via violence and force (both threatened and very, very real).
History is written by the winners, goes the old aphorism. But in this case, I think that it’d better if we can get folks to admit that the “winners” abdicated their legitimacy some time ago, and don’t deserve their continued elevated place in our culture where even polite disagreement is taken as unspeakably rude (or worse), and failure to show obsequious deference to their silliest of traditions is treated in much the same fashion as is a child who curses and strikes her mother in the grocery checkout line.
Nah, better to let their version of “History” just wither and die, as all illegitimate authorities eventually will. In fact, anything (within the bounds of ethics and decency) that we can do to help it along is fine by me.
aimai
Oh, Molly beat me to it!
John Sears
@ellaesther: I’m not sure how reading it aloud helps any in the plausibility or consistency department.
Though in a religious practice context those two things usually go right out the window at high speed, so I guess it wouldn’t *stand out* for lacking them either.
I can understand studying them, academically, in an ivory tower, comp-lit, essays on essays about other essays about the original source material obsessive-compulsive sort of way, but I’ve yet to see anything gleaned from said study that was of great enough importance to put in the limited time allotted to public school education. I’d rather leave it out and assign a bit more civics and geography, so people would know what a Vice President does, or where Iran actually is.
arguingwithsignposts
@Wile E. Quixote:
U owe me a keyboard
J in WA
Re: Nazis & Christianity, I’m no expert by any means, but I did study the german language and its literature for four years as an undergrad. “Sansibar oder der letzte Grund” by Andersch is fairly typical of post-WWII german literature (which, sadly, still doesn’t seem to have an english translation) in that it portrays the nazis not as anti-christian, but rather anti-freedom. There is a poignant side story in it of nazis on a search in a chapel for a particular statue of a monk reading a book, in order to destroy it; the offense in that case was not the fact that the monk was christian, but rather that he was reading a book of his own choice: freedom of thought was what they considered to be dangerous.
Now, granted, that’s fiction, but Andersch was attempting to convey the reality of the nazi regime, and he had just lived through WWII. So yeah, my sense is that they weren’t atheists, but certainly wanted to shape and use religion for their own purposes.
iLarynx
Actually, Hitler was a Christian, or at least, he claimed to be. Anyone familiar with history knows this.
“And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people… But at that time Christ was nailed to the Cross for his attitude towards the Jews; whereas our modern Christians enter into party politics and when elections are being held they debase themselves to beg for Jewish votes. They even enter into political intrigues with the atheistic Jewish parties against the interests of their own Christian nation.”
– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 11
“The fact that the Catholic Church has come to an agreement with Fascist Italy …proves beyond doubt that the Fascist world of ideas is closer to Christianity than those of Jewish liberalism or even atheistic Marxism…”
– Adolf Hitler in an article in the Völkischer Beobachter, February 29, 1929
“Today Christians … stand at the head of [this country]… I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past … (few) years.”
– Adolf Hitler, quoted in: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872
http://atheism.about.com/od/adolfhitlernazigermany/tp/AdolfHitlerChristian.htm
Frank
Characterizing the German Nazi Party as atheist is questionable at best and seems to be a conflation of Nazism and Communism.
The Wikipedia article on Nazism and Religion, which I would not cite as an authority, points to a number of good sources, which I would cite.
Aside: The amount of ignorance of history, especially recent history, amongst our media classes is positively astounding. But, then, it is quite a bit to expect persons who cannot get last year right to get last century right.
I am astounded.
Frank
Characterizing the German Nazi Party as atheist is questionable at best and seems to be a conflation of Nazism and Communism.
The Wikipedia article on Nazism and Religion, which I would not cite as an authority, points to a number of good sources, which I would cite.
Aside: The amount of ignorance of history, especially recent history, amongst our media classes is positively astounding. But, then, it is quite a bit to expect persons who cannot get last year right to get last century right.
John Sears
@aimai: No way Christmas is Saturnalia.
Saturnalia was a week long and full of drunken partying.
Fuck, someone PLEASE bring back Saturnalia.
(Yes, I get what you’re saying about the historical origin of Christmas. I just wish it was cooler in the modern day)
ellaesther
@Molly: Just one little addition to what you’re saying here:
This is the problem with monotheism. One God has long been interpreted to mean One Way.
Both Christianity and Islam are rife with it. Judaism was spared the chest thumping parts of this by virtue of being a tiny, persecuted minority — but it’s there, believe me! (Said the believing Jew). And I have the sense that it’s there in Baha’i, and probably even Zoroastrianism, for all I know, too.
Evinfuilt
You want to teach Religion History basically, and that’s not bad. A Comparative Religion class was offered to me in high School back in the early 90s, it really focused on how much all those religions had in common, who took ideas from whom and such.
It was a fascinating class, but many students nearly went insane from having their one true religion being treated the same as the Norse God Mythology. They didn’t calm down till we got to eastern religions and spent a few classes watching Winnie the Pooh.
kay
@Legalize:
I just like him for this because it’s so unpundit-like. I made fun of him for the Trig obsession, and I will again. I still think that’s stupid.
He’s completely ignoring all the derision, and pursuing Sarah Palin, and he’s not afraid of “serious pundits” looking askance.
None of the rest of them would ever take the risk.
New Yorker
Well, Bill Kristol and FOX isn’t trying to foist Paris Hilton on us as a serious candidate for the 2012 Presidential election.
Sully has explained a number of times why he’s doing this: as long as the GOP and its base continues to act as if Palin is a serious candidate, he’s going to treat her as such.
I do think he’s losing his marbles a bit, but I also think what he’s doing is necessary.
Sloegin
When schools across the country have cut *civics* classes to save money / meet No-Child and other requirements, the very *last* thing we need is religion or comp-religion classes being added to the cirriculum.
If you’re so worried about the Chillun’ not getting religion, send em to bible school on Sundays. Problem solved.
asiangrrlMN
First: Sully. Don’t. Give. a. Shit.
Second: Xmas. Don’t. Give. a. Shit.
Third: Bible. Don’t…let me just say I was raised Xtian, and I am not the better for it. I have read the whole damn Bible, and it did not enrich my life in any way. I have no desire to study it culturally, religiously, or any other -ly.
That could be, however, because I woke up this morning hacking up both lungs. I thought it was my yearly round of bronchitis, but I also have the chills, a fever (for me), an aching body, and fatigue. So, I am extra-cantankerous today, if that’s possible.
cleek
a wingnut would never do that.
nevermind that the fascists in both Italy and Germany were at war with communists and socialists, both internally and externally. nevermind that fascism developed as a way to combat socialism and communism.
MikeJ
@asiangrrlMN: You should study that section of Deuteronomy that has the chicken soup recipe.
Martin
@John Sears:
We never got rid of it – we call it spring break at any acceptable party school. Go enroll at UofOk, and you’re golden.
asiangrrlMN
@MikeJ: Ahhh! Chicken soup for the soul! I remember that section well.
Martin
What’s interesting and weird is how seriously Sully is taking this. Who gives a fuck? I mean, yeah, someone really should if Palin is really aiming for public office, but she’s not actively doing so now. It’s pretty weird because Palin seems more suitable for mockery than serious study.
MikeJ
@asiangrrlMN: Tastes better in the mouth than the soul. I always like a nice steaming bowl when I’m sick on a chilly day.
It is my belief that for the study of religion all you need is Highway Sixty One Revisited. “God said to Abraham kill me son, Abe say man you must be puttin me on…”
Joe Bleau
If rubbernecking the epic unraveling of Sully is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
Sadly, though, he is causing me to reconsider my longstanding conviction that partaking in even copious amounts of weed is essentially harmless…
jeffreyw
@asiangrrlMN: Not chicken soup, but this will cure what ails ya.
satby
@Xenos:
Just throwing it out there that almost every nurse I know thinks the same thing about the long flight in labor story.
IndyLib
I remember reading Sully’s first set of posts about Palin. He didn’t know much about her but he seemed hopeful that maybe she was a sane, gay-friendly conservative. When it turned out she was a raging Christianist lunatic without a coherent thought capable of moving from her brain to her mouth, he was …shall we say, disappointed. I don’t think he’s ever forgiven her for not being what he hoped she would be – a conservative he could support – you know, one who was just like him.
oklahomo
@cleek:
That would require them understanding that Hitler co-opted the Nazi party and its handful of members, pushed aside the actual socialists (the “socialist” and “worker’s” parts of the party name), and had a number of them done in when he purged the brownshirts. The planks in the Nazi Party that were socialistic were ignored. Hitler needed big business for big war, and most German workers ended up being indentured to their employers. Hitler had several rivals in the early Nazi days — they were hardcore socialists and street fighters and they were pissed that he was using them as a springboard. (Goebbels himself was in a tug of war between rival groups, and he confessed privately at first of doubts about the direction Hitler was taking the party.)
These morons seem to think Nazism existed in a pocket universe, without ever considering the context of the Wiemar Republic and German society — and the global reach of our Great Depression.
Molly
@ellaesther: “This is the problem with monotheism. One God has long been interpreted to mean One Way.”
Yep. As a practicing Jew, you’ve got that rock solid grip on the Torah (and I wish more Christians did as well, our intellectual understanding of the Pentateuch is appalling). Monotheism tends to be a theology of conquerors. There’s some chest-thumping involved in the early voices of the Torah, but as you said, it gives way to a sense of preservation.
“And I have the sense that it’s there in Baha’i, and probably even Zoroastrianism, for all I know, too.”
Not as much in Baha’i; they’re the Unitarians of the Middle East. :) But Zoroastrianism? Oh hell yes, it’s there. It’s toned down somewhat because Zoroastrians are a persecuted minority in Iran and a tiny community (sound familiar?), but yep, the historical texts are just as strident. Few people could preach hell and damnation like Zoroaster describing Ahriman’s legions.
Fun stuff.
MikeJ
A gay friendly Catholic supremacist? I think he’s in for a long wait.
Randy P
@ellaesther:
I think it’s important to at least know the basic structure and the most important stories in the Bible as cultural referents. I realized this last week when discussing the Coen Brothers movie A Serious Man with my daughter, and I found out she had never heard of the Book of Job. I consider this a serious failing in her education as a Unitarian (which did include a year of Bible study, actually), and told her so.
Having said that, my Bible education is pretty spotty too. I know what the Book of Job is and the basic premise, but I can’t say I’ve ever actually read anything in it. And even at that, I didn’t know as much about the basic premise as I thought. When we were talking about this movie, my wife told me the whole thing is a bet between God and the Devil. I didn’t know that. That sounds more like an Aesop Fable to me, like the Sun and the North Wind competing to get some guy to take off his coat.
New Yorker
One of Sully’s major chinks in the armor is his immigrant’s rosy view of America, and thus he thinks there’s a serious, contemplative Oakeshott-ian right to be unearthed under the Palins and Teabaggers and Glen Becks. That’s why he was operating under the delusion that Obama could heal the rifts of the Bush years, whereas those of us who know this country knew that Obama’s skin color was going to send the right into apoplectic rage.
There isn’t a serious, contemplative right in this country, Andrew. What you see is what you get. The right in this country is and always has been a collection of paranoid xenophobic religious nutcases just looking for an excuse for violence. The difference between what you wanted and what you got with Palin should make this clear enough.
Randy P
@John Sears:
The other nice thing about Saturnalia is that you could make the calendar be 12 equal-length months of 30 days each. The leftover 5 days are what you use for Saturnalia. Wouldn’t that make life a lot easier? And on leap years we could add the extra day to Saturnalia. None of this February-28-except-when-its-29 stuff.
MikeJ
You know those asshole frat boys who brag about how much their girl friend loves them, even when he treats her like shit?
That’s the book of Job.
John Sears
@Randy P: Fuck yeah I could get behind that.
Every fourth year you get an extra Saturnalia day. Kickass.
asiangrrlMN
@MikeJ: Nice song! I don’t have chicken soup, but I do have clam chowder. Good enough.
mds
[…]
Which is yet another of the reasons why David Neiwert is so stressed out. The modern American right wing makes it harder and harder to avoid Godwin.
WereBear
I’m touched by the Sully concern always on display here, and I actually agree with him in that the whole pregnancy story set off every one of my Hinky Alarms. I don’t know exactly what she is concealing, (maybe only her thoughts,) but I do understand a bit of his obsession.
However, I have little respect for his convictions or the thought processes that he claims led to them. Even before he massaged his own behind, on camera, at the end of one of Bill Maher’s HBO shows.
The reason he says he likes conservatism no longer has anything to do with Actually Practiced Conservatism. Fiscal responsibility, human dignity, and rational actors has gone completely out the window and defenestrated itself on the sidewalk. Yet he continues to scold it lovingly, instead of slamming its putrid ass in jail.
Yes, I know he spoke out against torture, and good for him. But he still has dinner with the perpetrators, so to speak.
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: Good thing I have my clam chowder or I would be seriously jealous. As it is, I am only moderately jealous!
@MikeJ: I think you should summarize every book. You have the skill (and you made me laugh).
Svensker
@John Sears:
Because religion has played a huge role in American, not to mention world, history?
How can you possibly talk about ancient Rome, the dark ages, the medieval period, the influence of the Moors and Islam in the medieval period, the Crusades, the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Reformation, Henry VIII, Thomas a Kempis, the Puritans, the Enlightenment, the Great Awakening, etc., etc., etc. without knowing something basic about the religions involved and why people cared?
As well, also, too, much of Western great literature quotes or borrows from the Bible — reading the classics, if anyone bothers to do that any more — is a much richer experience if you know the references. (I would say that a basic knowledge of the Bible along with the Greek and Roman classics, should be foundational for anyone planning to go to college in the West, but I’m a crank that way.)
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
It’s pretty hard to read authors like Melville, Dostoyevksy, Faulkner, Mann, or any of several dozen others, without a working knowledge of Christianity.
If all you know about Christianity is that it had Jesus in it and that you think it’s stupid, you’re going to miss a lot of what those writers were trying to say. Same as if you’re trying to read Sophocles, Euripides, Homer, Virgil, or Ovid, and your only knowledge of Greek and Roman beliefs is that they had Zeus and Jove in them, and that you think they’re stupid.
If we’re not even going to try to understand the beliefs that people had when they wrote most of the founding works of western culture, we’re not going to really understand most of that culture at all. That makes the study of it essentially pointless. Might as well give up on the whole thing, and just study modern TV shows in school or something.
Shell
Well, gee, in the Harry Potter books they celebrate Christmas without any overt Christ, and nobody thinks they’re evil, pagan works……oh, wait.
Origuy
As an atheist, I agree with ellaester that knowledge of Christian beliefs is valuable for understanding Western literature and art. You can’t get many of the references in Shakespeare if you don’t know what he assumed everyone would know, although I think he drew more on Classical mythology than Christian. (As a crypto-Catholic, he had to be careful about theology.) I doubt they teach art appreciation in public schools anymore, but the symbolism draws heavily upon the Bible stories I learned as a kid in Sunday School.
I took a class in college on Hindu and Buddhist mythology; it was taught by the Sanskrit teacher. He didn’t ignore the philosophies, but it wasn’t treated as gospel, either. I doubt any but the most fundamentalist Hindu would have been offended. You couldn’t do that with Judeo-Christian beliefs in this country, at least not at the high school level or below.
Joe Bleau
@Svensker,
Your examples certainly seem to me to fall under the rubrik of “objective historical figures and events”…
An awful lot of the “Western great literature” that you cite here was written during a time when there was not a tremendous distinction made (at least in public) between Christianity as history and Christianity as fact. Thus, readers could be counted on to get the references – much of the time, the stakes were rather significantly higher for them than just a quality education.
Assuming a viewpoint that values true secularism in the classroom, it’s hard for me to mourn the fact that today’s idle youth haven’t had scripture crammed down their gullets like the noble children of yore…
Xenos
@Svensker: I had the good fortune to go to a private high school that took the classics seriously. Tenth grade English was spent on four texts: the Illiad, the Aeneid, the Bible, and the Divine Comedy. It was great, but maybe not well suited for non-elitist education.
Origuy
I meant to add that when I was in seventh grade in Indiana, my history teacher had a fascination with early Christianity. One of the things that has stuck with me is the story of St. Simon Stylites, sitting on a pillar for 37 years. But that was in 1072; I doubt the history teachers are telling that story now.
I also remember learning about Martin Luther. We were told that his reason for the 95 theses was his outrage at indulgences. Nobody mentioned the significant theological differences between Luther and the Pope. That might have challenged somebody’s beliefs.
Origuy
I didn’t go to school in 1072, that should be in 1972. Prevu plz?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Xenos:
Actually, I think that sounds like a truly excellent and well-rounded tenth grade English education. Let’s see, in my tenth grade English class, we read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter,” Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath,” and “Winesburg, Ohio.” (Some other stuff, too, but those were the main texts.)
All of those texts were impossible for me to understand, since I had no knowledge whatsoever of Christianity beyond that it had a Jesus guy in it, and I thought that it was stupid. In fact, it wasn’t until about 5 years later that I re-read “The Scarlet Letter” and sort of figured out what it was actually talking about. I got the gist of the works, but there was an entire layer of religious allegory going on that bypassed me completely. It was a shameful waste of time, in retrospect. And I think they could have taught us which portions of the Bible were being referenced without sounding either like Christianists or like militant atheists.
Seanly
@Brick Oven Bill:
I call parody troll.
Also, those English women have baubles showing a lack of Christ from teh Nazis! Never mind that few of my family’s Christmas ornaments and such contained any religious connotation. Even the really old ones from before we became a pack of atheist UU’s.
twiffer
@John Sears: you just aren’t doing christmas right.
Joshua Norton
Oh, theses. That makes more sense. I thought it would be kind of hard to nail feces to a door.
twiffer
@asiangrrlMN: sounds like the flu.
John Sears
@twiffer: I don’t celebrate Christmas.
When I was 12 I abandoned the church, formally, and declared my own 36 day long holiday, starting on Christmas and going to my own birthday (January 29th). I called it the ‘Month of Johnus’ and said that its primary characteristic was gift-giving… to me.
(Yes, I was a smartass kid.)
This reflected an older tradition in my family of not really celebrating my birthday, since we lived far from the rest of the family, and anything relating to my birthday would just get mushed into Christmas or spread out over the intervening weeks when packages came in the mail.
In more recent years I invented a second holiday, Christmoween, that falls shortly before Christmas each year and consists of gorging on, and giving away, loads of Halloween candy purchased at steep discount the first week of November.
I’m cool with celebrating either one with drunken parties though.
Rudi
I wonder what the Malkin and Coulter trees will look like?
twiffer
@John Sears: actually, i think the holiday is now thankhallochristoweenmasgiving. anyway, despite my family’s religions inclinations, christmas eve, christmas and the day after are celebrated by long stretches of eating and drinking. it’s more about family, than anything else. and a good standing rib roast. and plenty of drink. did i mention the drinking? even the few family members that do go to church (grandma and uncle) have a few before heading off.
New Yorker
And I was going to ask you what you got on your final exam in Anglo-Norman…..
gogol's wife
@Molly:
This is beautifully written. “Christian” does not equal “ignorant bigot.” What I’m sad about is that there are a lot of Christians like you in this country — I go to a church full of them. But we aren’t the ones who get all the publicity.
Notorious P.A.T.
@ellaesther:
No, that’s fine. The basics are okay at that age. But if we delve too deeply too soon we risk raising a generation of (shudder) Rick Warrens.
John Sears
@twiffer: Sounds like you’d have a good time at a Christmoween party.
tess
@John Sears: So *that’s* what my husband and I have been doing every year at Christmas!! We thought we were just hiding out from family w/bottles of wine, lots of good cheeses, roast leftovers for sandwiches, and the LOTR trilogy and extras–but it was Saturnalia! Excellent!
(my fundamentalist in-laws will be thrilled to hear it)
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@New Yorker:
You have to admit, it would be pretty impressive for a school in 1072 to be teaching about the Reformation that occurred 450 years later.
People say that Christianism was awful, but it wasn’t until we stopped our medieval Christianism that the Lord took the working knowledge of time travel away from us.
Deborah
First, the Nazis were not atheists. (Yeah, yeah, 20th person to make that point. Still.)
Secondly, doesn’t this demonstrate that we want the state to stay the hell out of Christmas? That if it’s a serious religious holiday you leave it to church and family to celebrate, rather than having the regime dictate appropriate displays of Christmasiness?
noncarborundum
@ThatPirateGuy:
Appears to, but doesn’t. Jeremiah 10:5 makes this clear:
It’s not a reproach against decorated trees that they “speak not” and “cannot go”, or that while they “cannot do evil” they can “do no good” either. It’s a reproach against idols, which were considered by their worshipers to be actual deities.
Xanthippas
Hey, you guys might like this article: “How the Nazis Stole Christmas.” A lot more detail about pretty much the same subject.
Honus
I posted this at S,N and I want to ask the same question here:
Has it occurred to these people who so hate hollywood elites that their greatest hero is a hollywood actor who, even though he was in uniform in WWII, never left the US and went home to his wife in Beverly Hills every night of the war?
engineer
@cleek:
“i reconnected with a high-school friend last week, on FB. then he started in with the “Obamacare will kill us all” shit, and i had to ignore him. and that bummed me out so much that i’ve been avoiding FB ever since.”
Yeah, let me tell ya. One of the smartest people I’ve ever known has a blog he started some time ago, but I’ve been out of touch. Recently I subscribed to the feed, though it was clear his attitudes had hardened badly over the many years. Not dumb wingnut, you know, but the smart person’s version, intense and intellectual hyper-Libertarian.
I didn’t follow the feeds closely. Then one day I see in the syndication list the brief intro to his post on the excellent book he’s been reading about the evils of Washington under the Dems. By Michelle Malkin. Shit, this subscription I need like a loch im kopf. Starting about ten seconds later, I have a sadder and a wiser blogroll.
Why do other people do this stuff? I’d blame the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but that’s a universal, so it’d mean I’ve deteriorated the same way other people have, and no way that’s true, get offa my fuckin lawn.
Porlock Junior
@Eric U.:
Hey, take another look at those cartoonish outline fish with the cross for an eye.
You know what having eyes represented as crosses means in the universal language of cartoons? Sure you do: dead fish. As a declaration of faith, that thing has a really striking effect.
Might be even better if attached upside down.
Comrade Darkness
@tess: With a dash of the Celtic Solstice (mistletoe, holly, wreaths–although the ancient Greeks also celebrated festivals by putting wreaths on their door). The overcoming/surviving winter hope for spring parts we got from the Pagans in the north. The Greek Pagans loved “winter”–it was when they grew their crops since it actually rained then.
Comrade Darkness
@MikeJ: You skipped over the opening where Satan taunts God into punking Job all the hell in the first place. That’s the most interesting part of it. Can you imagine entrusting your view of the universe to a weak-willed ninny deity? I always wondered how the Book of Job hadn’t made atheists out of every reasonable person who read it.
Chris Dowd
The Nazis as atheists meme has been a staple of the American Right for years now. It is at best- a ridiculous simplification and at worst just a lie.
The American Right has for years been trying to build up a cultural myth that the Nazi regime was somehow antithetical to established Christianity.
They point to the dabbling of people like Himmler and Goering in the occult as “proof” of the anti Christian roots of Nazism.
Conveniently forgotten is the extensive collaboration of protestant churches with the Nazi regime.
Yes- some resistance to the Nazi regime did come from individual priests and ministers- but far more support was offered to the Nazi by Christian churches than opposition.
VIKKI
Yes it’s pagan, but so is the so called christain fish as well as all the other mind controling so called Holidays, if you want to give a gift to all your family you do it on Dec. 25, your lover Feb. 14th, have costom party Oct. 25, moms in May dads in June…come on wake up when you want to give a gift guess what give it when ever or wherever you want just pay your rent…evictions are highest around Christmas due to the pressures put on people.Doing something harmful to you and others is called a form of mind control, free yourself. Do what you want and when you can, other wise we end up with the most dangerous time of year Christmas also highest time for heart attacks and suicide