Friday, December 29, 2006

Hanging Saddam

I'm actually not sure how I feel about hanging Saddam. Oh, I have no doubt that he deserves to be hanged for what they convicted him of and a lot of other things they didn't even try him for, but I'm not entirely convinced we should do it. Like everything else about our involvement over there, this is feeling... hasty. I'd be really curious to find out what the possible ramifications are going to be before we do this. If there's just one thing this administration doesn't grasp--and God knows they don't grasp anything--it's forethought.

The other thing I keep thinking is this: Saddam Hussein was convicted of basically invading part of Iran unlawfully with a cheap excuse, killing people because it suited him, overthrowing the existing government, letting loose his army to terrorize the region, and generally ignoring everyone else's opinion of proper behavior. For which it looks like he's going to be hanged in fairly short order.

Well, gee, thank goodness no-one thinks that our President's done that! Otherwise, we'd have to convict him and hang him for crimes against humanity, too. Quickly.

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Really nasty song (mwahahahahaaaaa!)

Note: If you're easily offended, skip this post. If you're not easily offended, read on!

I actually wrote this song over a year ago, but I've debated putting it on the blog. Recent events and seeing still more of the damage fundamentalists are doing to the world has prompted me to post this. Mockery's an exceptional political tool and it works all the better with people who have no sense of humor... which'd be these folks.

The backstory is this: This song was actually inspired by an abortive attempt to have a constructive discussion with a self-anointed Christian columnist named Mel who every week attempts to be profound (generally without any success, though I did see one or two columns that bordered on "cogent") in a wee, tiny little newspaper in Minnesota. I've seen his mailing list—he's not very ept with computers and didn't seem to grasp the idea of blind mailing lists—and he's got a very small fan club, but like most of his brand of twerp, he's enormously self-important.

I really wanted to find out how he got from the Bible to the nasty, judgmental, small-minded positions he took in his rather sloppily-written columns. It seemed like such a wild leap, and finding fundamentalists who are actually willing to talk about things to anyone who's not already assimilated into the mindset is very difficult. Unfortunately, having promised that he wanted to talk to me about what he was writing, he then proceeded to spout his peasant version of politics and then refused to talk to me after I started asking him a lot of questions. It was the usual line of drivel, sadly; I'd hoped for something new. (Shoot, I'd have settled for conversation that demonstrated self-awareness and not something generated by an "Eliza"-like program set up to run in "Christian drivel" mode, but no luck even there.)

He even lied to me about getting back to me in a week; I dropped him a couple emails reminding him of this promise about 2 years later, but he didn't even acknowledge them. Pity he doesn't have the courage of his supposed convictions… but I do have to thank him for one thing: he inspired a wonderful song!

The song is entitled "You Can Tell a Christian..." and it's really kind of a natural. You're welcome to spread it around in its current form (the link will download a PDF file).

Remember that there really are good Christians out there who are to be known and praised--I've known a couple myself and they're great people!--but far, far too many of them in this country are loudmouthed, ignorant little peasants who have no reason for continued existence on a planet that's discovered penicillin. They're the ones I wrote this song about.

(BTW, if you're a fan of this sort of thing, you might also enjoy the classic music video, "Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis" by Eric Schwartz, who coined the lovely term "hypo-Christianity.")

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