May 2005 (I): Back In The USSA

Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant runs an annual church camp for deaf/developmentally disabled people in June. Which causes her to leave the office—for an entire week of vacation.

Though her camp may sound noble, over the years I'm trapped in a room with this woman I hear sub-text suggesting something very different—that the deaf/DD are somehow Jesus' BAA's cross to bear. It must be something like that—because all indications are that she really dislikes her charges.

Gearing up for next month, Jesus' BAA posts a plea on the lunch room bulletin board. She wants donations of "craft supplies," and her list is very specific, including:

Toilet paper cardboard rolls
Egg cartons
Empty bleach jugs
CDs (cracked, but not broken)

And more that I've forgotten, but the other items are just as pathetic. I get the strong impression that Jesus' BAA considers these things "good enough for them—they won't know any better."

The camp is named in the traditional way: by cobbling together syllables of actual words, to create a fake-Indian name. In this case, the words need to be something in the fundie-speak line. So, let's say this name is "submit-mortify-follow = Camp SuMoFo."

May 1 is the second anniversary of Glorious Leader's "Mission Accomplished" photo op.

Each photo op is always akin to a picture puzzle of the find-what-doesn't-fit kind.

But this photo op, intended as it was to be a peak moment for the regime, required an even higher degree of orchestration than usual. The ship had to be turned around to obscure its actual location; the infamous banner hung (later to be blamed on the crew); the former AWOL jetted in—to create the illusion that he had flown and landed the plane, and to have him emerge in ludicrous costume, including "enhanced" codpiece.

And the date was no accident—the regime's propagandists are still so obsessed with Commies, and their degree of psychological projection is so enormous that they gleefully embrace the symbols and methods of "the other side."

As in, Grover Norquist's Lenin fixation, reported by David Brock:

...Grover admired the iron dedication of Lenin, whose dictum "Probe with bayonets, looking for weakness" he often quoted, and whose majestic portrait hung in Grover's Washington living room.

And there's the Cato Institute's "Leninist Strategy" for Social Security. In which the writers propose "what one might crudely call guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it," the latter being "the elderly… a very powerful and vocal interest group." Because "as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform."

Matt Taibbi—who actually lived for a time in the Soviet Union—turned the table on this. Within days of the 2003 photo op, he responded with, "Back in the U.S.S.A."—

Ask anyone who’s lived in a communist country, and he’ll tell you: Modern America is deja vu all over again. And if ever there was a Soviet spectacle, it was Bush’s speech last week.

Think about it. Huge weapons on display, in foreground and background. The leader who has never fought dressed in full military regalia. Crowds of adoring soldiers and "shock worker" types dressed in colorful costumes, carefully arranged for the cameras. A terrible, excruciatingly dull speech, 20 minutes of incoherent, redundant patriotism (Bush used the words "free" or "freedom" 19 times in an 1800-word speech) and chimpanzoid chest-pounding.

On May Day.

That was Red Square every year for about 70 straight years. And now it is a most natural fit in our society.

After a Bush photo op late this the month, Clever Sister forwards freaky quotes from this source—

NIGHTLIGHT CHRISTIAN ADOPTIONS WAS INTRODUCED BY PRESIDENT BUSH AT MAY 24,2005, 2:10pm EST PRESS CONFERENCE ON STEM CELL RESEARCH. HE SPOKE OF THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE AND THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "SPARE EMBRYO."TWENTY ONE OF OUR SNOWFLAKES CHILDREN JOINED HIM IN ORDER TO PUT A FACE TO THESE EMBRYOS UNDER DISCUSSION.

Nightlight Snowflakes FAQ

Nightlight is the only agency in the country (that we are aware of)* that offers Embryo Adoption. As you consider your options you should know that another method of adoption is now available embryo adoption. By some estimates, there are over 100,000 frozen embryos in cryo banks throughout the United States. Pre born children are waiting.

[*A 2009 search shows that they've made sure of this: "Snowflakes is a registered trademark of Nightlight Christian Adoptions."]

And in Kansas one of the new versions of the Scopes trial unfolds—well-funded right-wingers working here, as in other states, for a Scopes re-write.

PZ Myers responds with a piece about much older Kansas events:

There is a geological formation in Kansas called the Niobrara Chalk. Actually, it's not just in Kansas; it extends all the way up into Canada, but the Niobrara has been exposed by erosion over much of northwestern Kansas, making it easy to dig into.

...The exposed chalks of northwestern Kansas are also old, dating to between 87 and 82 million years ago...

The inescapable conclusion is that Kansas was under water during the age of the dinosaurs...

After describing the fossil record's "genuinely weird animals—we have nothing comparable to them today—yet they were diverse and successful and found in numbers in the Niobrara Chalk," Myers goes on to say:

I've only briefly visited modern Kansas, but the Kansas of my imagination is a fiercely exotic ocean, a warm and savage sea richer than any place still extant. Try mentioning the magic word "Niobrara" to a paleontologist, or any enthusiast familiar with Mesozoic reptiles...their eyes will light up as it conjures visions of the world of 85 million years ago, a world well documented in the incredible fossil beds of Kansas. It's a powerful, evocative word that links us to a wealth of evidence and a complex, fascinating history.

Reading about the ridiculous anti-evolution trial going on there was rather depressing. It isn't just that the creationist arguments are so poor, but that they are making them in Kansas, where beneath their very feet are the relics of an ancient world that show them to be wrong. Don't schoolchildren there take pride in the paleontological wealth of their home? Do the people bury their imaginations and avoid thinking about the history that surrounds them?

And, Myers says, if there were truth in the "metaphysical codswallop" of the challengers to science education, then "the [courthouse] floor would have cracked open beneath their feet to allow a spectral tylosaur to rise up and gulp them down."