I’m working on a longer post on the question of causation, madness and murder, but I have to stop that for a moment of sheer rage.
Y’all know that I’m a bit squeamish in my language here — the way I write f**k and all that — but let me drop that reticence for just this once and say that I hope that notorious goatbuggering cretin, Erick Erickson, suffers every possible anguish reserved for those who see the suffering of others as evidence of their god’s love for them. Fuck him. Fuck him with a rusty hatchet pitchfork.
Why say I so?
Because he had the wretched cruelty to write:
Through it all though, well meaning people on both sides of the ideological and partisan divide are not talking about the one thing that should be talked about — a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
(h/t Media Matters)
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Just marvel first at the gutshredding stupidity of this — I mean, I know that Erickson is an imbecile, but surely even a man of his grotesquely limited capacities could recognize the problem of evil when, as in his own words, it steps up and whomps him upside the head?
Yup, sure, that’s my first thought: kill a nine year old girl; shoot some nice lady through the left hemisphere, murder a judge, and the proper response is to reflect on just how much that Jewish love child Jesus has done for me lately.
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In Jewish ritual, Shiva, the seven days after a funeral, is woven through with practices that center on leading those who have just lost someone through the most wrenching experiences of sorrow. Among the traditions: those who would offer comfort are enjoined to let the bereaved speak first — or not — and only when the mourner does should they respond, following the lead those who have suffered the lost give them. There’s a reason for that: it’s so that gutless, self-absorbed, miserable excuses for humanity like Erickson don’t drop their trousers and beshit a house of bereavement.
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In that light, what kind of shitheel tells those who have just lost all-in-all in this world that they should make (or should have made) nice with jeezus and all would have been/will be well. Especially when the best known victim, Gabrielle Giffords, is in fact Jewish.
SATSQ: Shitheels like Erick Erickson.
Worse yet — he doubled down.
I mean, I don’t think it takes a huge dollop of cultural sensitivity to realize that Jews — even or especially those, like me, drifting into committedly Jewish atheism, would find it both risible and hateful to be told to bow down to Jesus or go to hell.
Seriously. He goes there:
…here is the reality: beyond us is a world we cannot see with our eyes. It impacts us on a daily basis. It is a world of very real angels and very real demons. It is a world of a very real God and a very real Satan, a very real Heaven and a very real Hell.
…And, frankly, at times like this I am more and more mindful of the great chasm in this world between the saved and damned.
To which I say that were there an Inferno, it would reserve a special place for one who says to those who have suffered and those who have lost all in all in this world that if they don’t make nice to his plastic jeezus they must suffer eternal torment.
As those struck by the Arizona tragedy already know, there is indeed a hell. It exists in this world, and we sorrow for those cast into it through no ill-deed of their own. Those who have true kindness in them — the saving grace of human mercy — will do what they can to ease the misery of those who have suffered so. That worthless waste of sperm that is Erick Erickson would rather rub salt in the wounds.
Civilized people would shun the Ericksons of the world. CNN has a choice. For now, I make mine. Til he goes, I withhold my eyes — from the channel, the website, the whole shooting match.
*Details here. I personally favor numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9, but YMMV. Note the key point though: I do not wish that Erick Erickson should die. I do not seek to wreak violence upon his person. Divine judgment, baby. That’s all.
Images: Peter Paul Rubens, The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1612
Hans Memling, The Last Judgment, triptych, right wing (inner): Casting the Damned into Hell, 1467-1471