MINDS LIKE THESE

by Ross Sharp

This bastard act of cynical political bigotry …

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has assured religious groups they will have the ”freedom” under a new rights bill to discriminate against homosexuals and others they deem sinners, according to the head of the Australian Christian Lobby.

Under current law, faith-based organisations, including schools and hospitals, can refuse to hire those they view as sinners if they consider it ”is necessary to avoid injury to the religious sensitivities of adherents of that religion”.

Ms Gillard has met Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace several times, and he says she assured him ”she has no intention of restricting freedom of religion” when it comes to religious groups’ legal rights to discriminate in hiring and firing.

… prompts this comment from Brian of Glenroy:

“The extremist Muslims will love to exploit this so as to incite things like refusing to sell certain meats etc etc because it offends their religion and ban xmas etc from schools, until, as Julia CREATED, bibles are banned because many conflict with others. As for gay issues having nothing to do with religion, in fact classified as a mental illness in japan. I don’t think gay marriage is even important enough for Govt to be considering when there are more other urgent important things to do. Take a holiday and get married overseas in places that do accept it and stop whinging. Govt WAS NOT CREATED TO TO MARRY GAY PEOPLE furthermore, it contravenes bibles that say gayness is a sin and the constitution that restricts Govt FROM INTERFERING WITH RELIGIONS. Julia needs to start running the country rather than get prisoners released, spend mass time on gay marriage, etc. I think so far she only created a tax on us called carbon tax, trying to think what else she has done in over 2 years hmmm. Any other exec would be sacked for lack of working.” BRIAN, Glenroy, January 16, 2013, 8:39AM

I had begun this post in a very different fashion until I realised (once more) that, just as you cannot argue with a stupid person, there is also a point one passes when making fun of stupid people just seems like a sad and empty exercise in underwhelming and self-congratulatory indulgence.

They’re stupid.

Their numbers are legion.

Take the NRA …

… it exists in a footsteps-in-the-dark world of Wild-West myth and Cold War fiction, a knee-trembling siege mentality of curtain-peeking fear and shoulder-hitched tension, fingers forever on triggers, a government agent at the door – “We’ll be listening to you” – shadows moving in the night, loyalties fleeting, there are strangers in town, a sweat breaks out, gotta keep your wits about you …

… “Look, Mr. MacReedy, there is a law in this county against shootin’ dogs. But when I see a mad dog, I don’t wait for him to bite me” …

There is a Mad Dog in the White House.

Black Dog. Only attacks white folk.

Takin’ the guns away. Rapin’ the women. Killin’ the babies.

The angry black savage from Africa and the angry black savages’ angry black wife …

Colin Powell …

“When I see a former governor say that the president is shuckin’ and jivin’, that’s a racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow, he was tired, he didn’t do well, he said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans but to those of us who are African-Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with it.”

Now the nigger* wants to take the guns away.

Obama The Secret Muslim, terrorist trained in Pakistan, educated in a madrassa, his calling to bring a nation under Communist dictatorship, his message approved by the UN, and brought to you by Delphi™® mind-control techniques – “Now, with new added Delphi™®, you’ll never have to think for yourself ever again! Aren’t you glad you’re with Delphi™®!”

In minds like these lurks a world where the Bond villains are real, a saloon shoot-up is always just a spilt drink away, and secret organisations comprising darkly complected peoples in oddly decorated robes weave elaborate conspiracies specifically designed to rob 311 million people of their 2nd Amendment right to blow holes in tin cans with bazookas and then go home to pull themselves silly in sticky celebration of their mighty powers and trigger-pullin’ prowess.

Adam Gopnik from The New Yorker …

“There has not once been a tyrannical government demanding armed opposition since we got rid of the British. There was, however, a rather famous occasion when armed radicals used their guns to attempt to destroy the democratically elected government in order to preserve their right to treat their fellow humans as property. The right to keep weapons in order to commit violent sedition has not, since 1865, really been widely regarded as a central American liberty.”

It is an odd state of mind which, in a long-established democracy, finds a perverse sense of moral and intellectual superiority in knowing, just knowing, that the primary goal of their country’s government and that of the current President is to oppress and enslave the entire population because the enslavement of 311 million people is such a joyful and appealingly constructive concept to entertain. Why, if he played his cards just right, he could probably pull it off with the stroke of a pen over a light lunch of tuna and salad and then go celebrate with a few hoops and a cigarette.

In minds like these …

Wayne LaPierre from the NRA …

“The NRA is gonna bring all its knowledge, all its dedication and all its resources to develop a model national schools shield emergency response program for every single school in America that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control, to information technology, to student and teacher training, this multifaceted program will be developed by the very best experts in the field. Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson will lead the effort as national director of the National Model School Shield Program, with a budget provided by the NRA of whatever scope the task requires. His experience as United States attorney, director of the Drug Enforcement Agency, and undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security will give him the knowledge and expertise to hire the most knowledgeable and credentialed experts that are available in the United States of America to get this program up and running from the first day forward.”

‘Cause all God’s teachers love handguns, handguns, all God’s teachers love Vel-cro vests.

In minds like these.

Amy Davidson from The New Yorker …

“Will we evaluate teachers not only on their students’ test scores, but on target practice, with merit pay for mastery of semi-automatic weapons? Mourners at the funeral of the next Vicki Soto shouldn’t have to whisper about her aim. Or is the only good teacher the teacher who keeps a Glock in her purse, and knows how to use it; or the one who has a second gun on her so that when some troubled eighth-grader grabs the classroom weapon she can shoot down her own student?”

The earth is 6,000 years old. Man rode the dinosaur. Abortion causes earthquakes. Republicans for Rape. Ronald Reagan saved the world. Obama wants to destroy it. Radical homosexuals want to give your children alcohol and drugs and in-class demonstrations on how to mast**bate or get their wombs scraped. Sandy Hook was a government black-op exercise. Civil unrest is imminent, basic freedoms are threatened, clean your guns before they come and take ‘em and get ready for the big show.

Stupid people.

Like Brian of Glenroy back there at the top, one of a growing number of our very own home-grown halfwits, his every primal fear, his every gnawing anxiety about life on this earth at this particular point in time, spat out in 188 barely literate words that lurch from Muslims fucking with meat to banning Christmas in schools, the evils of gayness, mental illness in Japan, violent prisoners waltzing out of prisons, and the carbon tax.

The common thread between all being the face of pure, unconscionable evil that is Julia Gillard , Red Queen of the Underworld.

Understanding the motives behind Gillard’s ridiculous decision is baffling enough given that this is supposed to be a Labor government, a party that once prided itself on policies of social inclusion.

But understanding the minds of those – like Brian of Glenroy, like the NRA and their more rabidly unhinged adherents, like Republicans for Rape, like Andrew Bolt – whose entire worldview is a shadowy mélange of Chinese whispers, each whisper a threat, of gossip, innuendo, of covert operations in dank warehouses down Portside where strange men in hats and sunglasses come and go in dark sedans, where evil is a real and tangible thing and dances in the hearts and minds of all leaders and all governments all over the world – understanding minds like these cannot be done, nor should it, for if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.

And yonder that way the willies lie.

*Click that. Go on.