Governor Rick Perry, who may or may not be running for president on the Republican ticket (any day now we may—or may not—get an announcement) has put out a call for a great big Texas style get-together prayer meeting.  He has a passel of preachers coming to harrangue about the problems of America.

There’s only a couple of problems with the guest list and what it says about Perry.

He has one preacher who said that Hitler was sent by god to force all the Jews back to Israel (part of the Grand Design).

Another insists that not one more permit be issued for another mosque anywhere in the United States.

We have another who claims that the reason Japan’s stock market crashed was because the Emperor had sex with the sun goddess.

Still one more claims that demons are being released through the good works of people who are doing those good works for all the wrong reasons.

And still another claiming that the Illuminati are still extant and that the Statue of Liberty is an idol to a false god and that the Illuminati seek to reduce the population of the world to half a billion and that Obama’s health care program is the start of the purge.

Perry himself has claimed that this meeting is important for policy reasons—that here the nation will learn what to do to set ourselves back on track.

Hmm.

How can I say this without offending anyone…

I can’t. So I’ll just say it.

This is balls out insanity, absurdity carried to the level of national circus, religion administered like fluoride in the water but with the effect of morphine.  People who swallow this nonsense are—

Careful there now, everyone is entitled to their beliefs, no one’s point of view is superior to anyone else’s, we have to be tolerant and allow people who hold their opinions as they see fit.  This is after all a country that holds with freedom of religion.

Except that another of the invited preachers has stated quite forcefully that only christians should have freedom of religion, that the Founders never intended it to extend to any other group.  So much for tolerance on that end.

No, it is time we collectively began calling this what it is.  Bullshit.

But dangerous bullshit.  All the jokes aside, the possibility of directing national policy based on what some crackpots have gleaned from the Bible, as if there were no other way to see the world, is infantile and potentially destructive to the planet, since many of these folks are panting for the Apocalypse.  They hunger for Armageddon.

And those who sit in their audiences and lap this up as if it were intellectual ambrosia—of course it must be, look at the signs, it was prophesied, look at the state of the world—validating their apparent revulsion for the things they see around them.

It is, simply, the politics of bigotry, of intolerance, of ignorance, of fashion, rhetoric designed to trigger emotional responses based on shock and fear and, let’s be honest, stupidity.  And all of it packaged with the imprimatur of a holy book, as if by claiming it all comes from Genesis through Revelations the vitriolic condemnation of whatever one happens to find offensive or simply incomprehensible is justified and actions based on that condemnation are mandatory if we are to “save” the world.  Or just America, as I’ve noticed most of these folks don’t seem to have much use for anything outside our borders.

It is possible these politicians that dally with this cultural miasma believe they can play with it, a mongoose dance with a venomous cobra, and, after winning the election, can act according to their possibly more rational inclinations.  But it seems that there is a gravitational effect they have failed to consider, and the longer the GOP plays with this nonsense the more distorted and irrational their direction becomes.

And I hear the defense that these folks are not “real christians”, as if that is somehow encouraging.  If true, then they are mounting an assault on “real” christians, but the problem is, since they base much of this on a belief in the same ideology it’s difficult to attack them on how they’re in error.

August 6th is the date for this national prayer gorge.  If Rick Perry achieves the nomination, I think we should all be very afraid.  He may think he can control the tiger he’s riding, but he’s likely to get eaten along with the rest of us.

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p.s.  There actually is a Republican candidate this time around that I find I could vote for.  It might be worthwhile to talk this man up a bit.  Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico.  Check out his Issues section.  He sounds like a conservative with a brain who is not afraid to use it.

[Image by Erich Vieth, using Image of Rick Perry (Wikimedia Commons) and image from Dreamstime.com, with permission]