Well, you know this country is really in the crapper when assorted denizens and fruitcakes are so desperate they have to call on the divine for deliverance! Such was the case yesterday at Houston's Reliant Stadium as Texas Governor Rick donned his pastor garb to implore 30,000 of the mostly white evangelical faithful to pray to Jesus. Evidently, these knuckleheads were praying for "national leadership" as well as a deliverance from Texas' prolonged drought.
If they were really smart, as opposed to being easily manipulated bumpkins, they'd have done a recall election (a la Wisconsin this Tuesday) to get rid of "Pastor Perry", whose policies have once more ensured Tex-ass is near the bottom of national stats for health care, as well as education (where a new curriculum is soon to be implemented which places the Confederacy on the level of the Union in terms of its "states' rights", while allowing creationism codswallop to be taught alongside evolution.
As for Texas' drought, the answers lie not in appealing to any mythical divinity but rather endorsing and applying policies which lower fossil fuel consumption and its CO2 effluent, which is the primary factor driving global warming. As we know, this summer we've beheld at least three of the most significant early warning signs of global warming: record night time temperatures (more than 6,400 such records have been broken in 793 cities across the country thus far); deluges in certain specific areas (such as recently occurred in Charlotte, NC flooding the downtown streets with 5' of water) and drought in other areas (such as we behold across Texas and Oklahoma)
But what has Perry's Texas done to allay or mitigate the effects of Co2? Absolutely nothing! As a matter of fact, he has encouraged nonstop drilling and also the reckless exploitation of the state's precious water resources in natural gas fracking and other efforts. Indeed, Perry is one of the biggest beneficiaries of King Oil since GeeDumbya Bush occupied the same Governor's chair 10 years ago.
And this character now wants to be President? Some entity or other help us all! If he does manage to win the Reptile nomination and then get shoehorned in (maybe via another Supreme Court fiasco since the 2012 election now stands to be much closer than it ought to be, no thanks to Obama's shooting himself and the Ds in the foot) we're all for the high jump. Look for Perry-style prayer circuses every other week and "faith based" charities to assume whole new dimensions!
But the last thing we need is another drawling Texas nitwit in the White House. What we do need is for our own citizens to get smarter faster as opposed to being exploited as bigoted dupes. This is why it was gratifying to see more than 100 actual Texas ministers (featured on CBS News yesterday evening) asserting that they stongly objected to Perry's performance as "exclusionary" and "divisive". Indeed it was, since it almost exclusively welcomed only the most bigoted white evangelical faction. (Who, sadly, now comprise 25% of the electorate!)
In addition, as atheist and humanist protestors observed, Perry as state governor was transgressing the separation of church and state which is no mere "myth" as the warped tea baggers try to portray it. They were on the right track, but it is doubtful many (if any) of the entranced, pseudo-saved knuckle-draggers participating in Perry's circus registered the message.
The old Baltimore Evening Sun columnist and satirist H.L. Mencken would have had a field day observing this spectacle of so many thousands making fools of themselves when this nation has real, pressing problems to solve. Simply consider what Mencken had to say about his fellow countrymen at HIS Time:
"Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy.
And here, more than anywhere else that I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly - the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat- slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries, and extravagances - is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with the most fabulous daring and originality, that only a man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows."
H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series, Library of America, pp. 303-04
Sadly, yesterday's prayer and deliverance stupidity in Texas fits Mencken's portrayal to a tee.
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