JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.
GOD IS ON OUR SIDE
By Jack Random
“What if God was one of us?”
Eric Bazilian (from the song recorded by Alanis Morissette and Joan Osbourne).
One of the critical lessons of science is that change of any magnitude does not occur by random chance. Chance is the standard by which we measure the effects of change. Introduce a variable into the field of play (a universe of chance) and you will be able to measure cause and effect.
Those who deny this basic scientific truth live in a world without reason. They are rudderless wanderers, lost in a field of infinite darkness. They are cave dwellers in a world of technology or apes before the discovery of tools.
In today’s political environment, the science deniers are the low-lying fruit that multi-billion dollar corporations exploit to their own interests. They deny climate change. They live in doublewide mobile homes in tornado alley and wonder why god has forsaken them. They are the desperately poor of Biloxi, Mississippi and Mobile, Alabama believing that the great flood is biblical prophecy and something to be welcomed with the grace of our lord.
They are the farmers and ranchers on the barren wastelands of Texas and Oklahoma watching the soil dry out and crack like hardened leather while the oil barons and energy marketeers contaminate underground water supplies to seize natural gas, unleashing waves of rumbling earth in the process.
The end is nigh! they mumble as they wait through another year of punishing drought.
They watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage and its never about fact or reason. It’s about whose side you’re on.
Are you with us or against us? a bumbling president once asked. If you’re with us, you’re one of us; you believe as we believe; you talk as we talk…and you suffer as we witness your suffering for it is divine will.
They value loyalty above all other virtues. They have no sense of justice, fairness, right or wrong. They stand with their tribe at all costs.
They prepare their children to engage the world by despising science, distrusting truths and rejecting acquired wisdom as blasphemy. They send them to wars we have no business fighting and cheer them as heroes even as they kill innocents of other nations.
After centuries of indoctrination (like Al Qaeda or the Taliban) it may be impossible to reach them and enlighten them in time to save us from the mass destruction that awaits us just around the corner of global climate change. We can only hope to fight back and we must choose our weapons wisely.
The enemy has guns. They have automatic and semi-automatic weapons, grenades, missile launchers, anti-aircraft guns, bombs and ammunition and the will to use them. They have the firepower to stall a rampaging pack of pachyderms. If they could kill a drought or blow away a chain of tornadoes, their lives would be safe and secure. If they could turn back the pulse of time with machine guns and explosives, a solution would be at hand.
The real question is: Why haven’t they turned on the corporations that stole their homes, took their retirements, denied their benefits, slashed their wages, ravaged their lands, poisoned their water and destroyed their communities?
The answer is: They believe they are on the same team.
It is as ludicrous as Joe the Plumber believing he’s a country rock star but they believe it without question or doubt. Our job is to convince them they’re wrong. Not only are they not on the same team; they are not in the same league.
It does no good to call them names (however quick they are to belittle us by the same crude tactic). Rush Limbaugh is neither a fool nor an idiot; he is a very effective propagandist. The time may come when Rush (perhaps on his deathbed) confesses that he didn’t believe a word that spewed from his mouth but he made a great deal of money spewing it.
No, we can’t beat them at name-calling. They have mastered the art. They have raised the standard for playground bullying by refining the rules for: I know you are but what am I? (If you want to know your opponents weakness, listen to his accusations.) It makes them giddy to apply such nonsense to virtually any challenge or accusation.
What then can we do?
If we want to engage them, persuade them, enrage them and disrupt the simplistic view of the world that envelops them, we must claim allegiance with the one and only entity they cannot abide being without.
We must stand with God.
We must defend God against all detractors: God did not destroy your town with a massive, unprecedented chain of twisters; Exxon, BP and Chevron did. God did not poison your drinking water; the fracking natural gas industry did. God did not curse your land with a seven-year drought; T Boone Pickens and two hundred years of fossil fuel burning industry did.
We must claim God as one of us. We must claim Jesus as a captain on our team.
Anyone who claims that God wants contaminated water, toxic air, vengeful wars and mass destruction is a charlatan and a fraud.
God is one of us and their gods are just pretenders.
Jazz.
JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, GLOBAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.
