Keep it to yourself
By Capt. Fogg
There have been some, but not many, events in the American political circus that have left me feeling almost as bilious as last night's Democratic revival meeting. Ronald Reagan's colonoscopy photos on TV for one, and the detailed descriptions of Bill Clinton's dalliance posted on the Internet by the very same Republicans who were trying to make it illegal to talk about sex in cyberspace. Way too much information, as the cliché goes. I want to know more about all the candidates, but I don't to share a confessional any more than I want to share a bathroom with them.
I smell the same flatus-in-the-elevator, dirty laundry funk in the fulsome proclamations of fatuous faith by people claiming to be capable of filling the most powerful office on the planet. I don't want to know that the guy who feels chock full of sin has a finger on the button or can't get through a marital crisis without invoking invisible spirits and claiming fealty to a supernatural master with inclinations toward world destruction. I'm not impressed with someone who needs the spectre of eternal punishment resting on his shoulder to be able to make a moral or ethical decision. I'm just not impressed with faith at all; it's a sign of weakness.
Although I guess it's best that I know whatever batshit beliefs a candidate has, I still can't see such lapses of decorum as anything but vulgar if they are sincere and anything but disgusting if they are not.
(Cross-posted at Human Voices.)
There have been some, but not many, events in the American political circus that have left me feeling almost as bilious as last night's Democratic revival meeting. Ronald Reagan's colonoscopy photos on TV for one, and the detailed descriptions of Bill Clinton's dalliance posted on the Internet by the very same Republicans who were trying to make it illegal to talk about sex in cyberspace. Way too much information, as the cliché goes. I want to know more about all the candidates, but I don't to share a confessional any more than I want to share a bathroom with them.
I smell the same flatus-in-the-elevator, dirty laundry funk in the fulsome proclamations of fatuous faith by people claiming to be capable of filling the most powerful office on the planet. I don't want to know that the guy who feels chock full of sin has a finger on the button or can't get through a marital crisis without invoking invisible spirits and claiming fealty to a supernatural master with inclinations toward world destruction. I'm not impressed with someone who needs the spectre of eternal punishment resting on his shoulder to be able to make a moral or ethical decision. I'm just not impressed with faith at all; it's a sign of weakness.
Although I guess it's best that I know whatever batshit beliefs a candidate has, I still can't see such lapses of decorum as anything but vulgar if they are sincere and anything but disgusting if they are not.
(Cross-posted at Human Voices.)
posted by Capt. Fogg at
10:25 AM
2 Comments:
One should not conflate being "a person of faith" with being one who "needs the spectre of eternal punishment resting on his shoulder to be able to make a moral or ethical decision."
Such acts of superficial conflation and caricaturing could be interpreted as a sign of weakness.
By
Anonymous, at 1:24 PM
Surely one always interprets tendentiously so as to preserve faith, that's one of the weakness of non-rational people, but I'm not putting words in their mouths, I'm quoting. I'm not talking about everyone, I'm talking about candidates for a secular executive position who offer faith as some sort of executive skill, which it is not.
Dogs have a great deal of faith. They do not make good presidents.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 2:02 PM
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