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=by= Iris Vander Pluym
perrystreetpalace.com

That god, tho.
SPOTTER: STEVEN JONAS

A longtime Loyal Reader™ sent us an image of yesterday’s New York Daily News cover, which we found quite interesting.

The Daily News, if you are blissfully unacquainted, is a New York metro-area tabloid that could perhaps best be described as the unholy offspring of the city’s two other daily rags, the execrable New York Times and Rupert Murdoch’s bird cage liner The New York Post. Its editorial slant is yawningly predictable and pro-status quo; its coverage of the pope’s recent visit, for example, fawning. In a word: conservative. That is why it is extraordinary to see this headline in giant screaming letters: “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS.” The “this” refers to the latest shoot-’em-up that as of this writing has left 14 dead in San Bernardino.

I don’t know about you, but I read that as a scathing rebuke of some god or other (it’s not entirely clear to me which one). To add insult to injury, the cover features tweets from four prominent Republicans posturing about prayer—their single, inept and reflexive response to such tragedies—and highlights the fact that these very “cowards” are among the only few people on Earth in a position to actually do something about US gun violence. Then, as a final insult to Zeus (or whoever), prayers to the deity in question are openly derided by the Daily News as “meaningless platitudes.”

BOOM.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is fantastic news, obviously: I think it’s fair to surmise that the paper’s editors have been reading my blog and finally taking the importance of god mockery to heart, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, speaking of shitty gods and shitty people, it will come as no shock to readers that the recent Planned Parenthood terrorist—who I will not name here because seriously, fuck him—is a conservative Christian, a violent, abusive, controlling, misogynist, rapist, stalker and wife batterer, with a looooong history of shitweaselry. It’s all good though, because his god totally forgives him for anything and everything he does, no matter how evil. One of his three ex-wives said in court papers, “He says that as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do whatever he pleases.” Christ, what an asshole. By which of course I mean the god Christ is a fucking asshole. This is the kind of shit he is only too happy to forgive:

• Planned Parenthood shooter douche made advances to a mall employee who repeatedly rebuffed him—quite justifiably, as it turns out:

[He] reportedly began to harass the woman on and off the clock. He followed her to her home and on Nov. 29, 1992, he reportedly ambushed her as she attempted to take out the trash.

“The suspect then allegedly put a knife to the victim’s neck and forced her back inside her residence,” said a police report about the incident. “The suspect then allegedly forced the victim down into the couch, struck her in the mouth with his fist, and then sexually assaulted her.”

The assault continued with [the conservative Christian] dragging the woman into a bedroom and continuing to rape her there.

His second wife, to whom he was married at the time of the rape, described the Christ-forgiven rapist in divorce filings as “controlling, abusive and serially unfaithful.” She said he “routinely gambled away the family’s money [but] was ever reluctant to provide for his wife and children financially.”

Hot-tempered and unstable, he “erupts into fury in a matter of seconds,” said [the evangelical Christian’s] second wife Barbara Mescher to attorneys. In her time with [the devout follower], she testified, she continually “lived in fear and dread of his emotional and physical abuse.”

Also:

“[The white male] has a history of arrests in South Carolina out of Colleton and Beaufort counties, records show,” said the Post and Courier‘s Glenn Smith and Melissa Boughton. “A background search completed by The Post and Courier found that [the conservative man] was arrested in 2003 on a cruelty to animals charge but was found not guilty in 2004. He was charged under the state’s Peeping Tom law in 2002 but that charge, too, was later dismissed, according to a background search.”

• A different ex-wife “called police in 1997 after a beating from [the forgiven Christian], but like the Charleston rape victim, she ultimately declined to press charges.”

Hey, if the god of the bible forgives him, why even bother to prosecute amirite?

Now okay, I admit it, here is where I get a little…confused. A timely report on a survey just issued by a Christian organization reveals that Jeezus followers have the most abortions, by far:

Surely this Jeezus can forgive them too, and presumably doesn’t need the likes of this asshole shooting at police and executing strangers on his behalf? Wow, theology is hard!

But if you take nothing else away from this little rant, take this: forgiveness is overrated. And so are gods.

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The Palace hereby extends a royal welcome to all of its new readers at the New York Daily News editorial board! Watch and learn, editors. Watch and learn.

Have a nice day.

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First filed by Iris Vander Pluym | December 3, 2015 at 5:16 pm | URL: http://wp.me/p14ovc-3lB

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Nauseated by the
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Had enough of their lies, escapism,
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.

Perry Street Palace } First Posted on June 10, 2013 by Iris Vander Pluym

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This is a guest post by Palace alum SJ, who has been on hiatus from regularly contributing to this and other publications. We are thrilled to have him grace our esteemed halls once more. A cocktail reception in his honor will be held in the bar from now until… well, whenever.

-The Palace.

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[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n those rare occasions when I reluctantly get drawn into discussing Ayn Rand with some sloganeering libertarian wackjob – and they’re ubiquitous, I tell you! – I enjoy pointing out that I have actually read Rand’s flatulent, preposterous, egomaniacal, contrived, sophomoric, simpleminded, interminable comic books without drawings. I figure conveying that information might give me momentary standing in an insular, arrogant mind obsessed with deluded, self-righteous resentment over being required to pay taxes in support of the public welfare. I think they call taxation “thievery.” Assholes.

I do not always disclose that my brief exposure to Rand’s one-dimensional superheroes and arch-villains occurred more than 50 years ago, not long after she wrote that rubbish. Fortunately for me, that was in the midst of a two-year, late-teen reading mania when I was devouring mostly good literature, and so I quickly moved on to less tendentious, more nuanced, more human, material. But I never forgot that brutal assault on my youthful, impressionable mind – and I still suffer from remembering far too many details from The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I could sign up to be a subject in a selective-memory-erasing clinical trial to try to get rid of the disturbing imagery imprinted by her much-too-fictional characters caricatures. But even if I were accepted into a study, it would be just my luck to be assigned to the placebo group; so I guess I’ll have to deal with it on my own. Maybe this diatribe will prove therapeutic.

Anyway, my Randian superhero phase lasted two or three months, at worst. If I had come upon that grandiose drivel at a more mature stage of life, say, 24 or 25, I might have recognized it immediately for what it was and treated it with the mockery it deserves, perhaps something along the lines of this barb, attributed to Dorothy Parker:

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

(Irony alert: Parker supposedly wrote or said that about another novel, The Cardinal’s Mistress, written by another wannabe philosopher with grandiose plans for humanity – the swaggering Benito Mussolini.)

I could have phrased my mockery in the same spirit, directed to other young people who had swallowed Rand’s grotesque version of reality: “This is not a novel to be digested. It should be thrown up with great force.”

It may be of interest that youthful infatuation with Rand’s quasi-philosophy, followed by “outgrowing her ideas,” is a known phenomenon, according to the Wikipedia entry on the philosophy of Objectivism. The conclusion is worth noting:

Supporters of Rand’s work recognize the phenomenon, but attribute it to the loss of youthful idealism and inability to resist social pressures for intellectual conformity. In contrast, [Rand biographer] Jennifer Burns says some critics “dismiss Rand as a shallow thinker appealing only to adolescents,” although Burns thinks the critics “miss her significance” as a “gateway drug” to right-wing politics.

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Libertarians’ virtual worship of Rand might therefore be said to betray their chronic immaturity, which would be consistent with my position. Like her, they seem to be living in a fictional world where they envisage themselves as superheroes (Howard Roark, John Galt, Dagny Taggart) fending off the sniveling masses (Romney’s 47 percent) and “collectivist” villains (liberals, moderates). What an irony that one of Goddess Rand’s prime principles – I think she thought she was channeling Aristotle – was, “Reality is real.” Too bad she hadn’t the slightest skill at creating any semblance of reality in her so- called novels. About the only response I can be bothered to make these days to the massive reality-distortion field she created is, “Give me a fucking break!” Objectivism, my ass – she should have been arrested for vandalizing the noble concept of objectivity.

So the only problem I have with this graphic that triggered my rant is that the word philosopher belongs in scare quotes.

Philosopher, my ass. If Ayn Rand is a philosopher, Michele Bachmann is a Constitutional scholar. Rand is the late-night infomercial of political philosophy. In a sane, educated society, she would be a standing joke, à la Bachmann.

As always, in an effort to remain fair and balanced – and if memory serves – I’ll sort of agree with The Goddess Rand on this one thing: she loathed Christianity, chiefly for its insistence on subservience and humility (not that we’re seeing much of the latter these days). That was a position she forcefully expressed in her fictional screeds. So why are her prominent right-wing disciples (Paul Ryan, Alan Greenspan, Clarence Thomas, Ron and son, Senator Rand Paul, et al.) so reluctant to acknowledge her militant atheism? Could it be because their overwhelmingly Christian-right supporters would be turned off??? (Insert a big, fucking DUH here to acknowledge the predictable political hypocrisy. And note that Christians similarly ignore all the nasty, embarrassing stuff in their “Good Book,” like how it supports slavery.)

In case you were skimming and missed the nuance, here are the cliff notes: Libertarians are immature, superficial, sloganeering ideologues. Or as the graphic says, “self-entitled pricks.” For all their intellectual pretensions, they are not serious thinkers and are not worthy of serious attention. Except for this: In the U.S. – and maybe only here, which, when you think about it, says a lot – they have become a political force to be reckoned with, along with their fundagelical™ Christian allies in the “Grand Old Tea Party” clown circus. Those unlikeliest of partners have joined forces to fight a war against democracy, social justice, and inclusiveness; they are poised to seize the opportunity to turn the country into a B-movie laboratory where they can actually run their half-baked, half-assed thought experiment.

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Libertarians are immature, superficial, sloganeering ideologues. For all their intellectual pretensions, they are not serious thinkers and are not worthy of serious attention. Except for this: In the U.S. – and maybe only here, which, when you think about it, says a lot – they have become a political force to be reckoned with…”

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Which almost guarantees that this weird marriage of cross-purposes – followers of the Goddess of Greed embracing the minions of Jezus – will appeal to a large percentage of low-information Americans.

How many Americans qualify for that label? I dunno; but as a North Carolinian still reeling from the November mugging, I’m certain it’s a large percentage.

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About Iris Vander Pluym

[box] Iris Vander Pluym is an artist and activist in NYC (West Village), and an unapologetic, godless, feminist lefty. Raised to believe Nice Girls™ do not discuss politics, sex or religion, it turns out those are pretty much the only topics she ever wants to talk about. [/box]

 

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Remember: All captions and pullquotes are furnished by the editors, NOT the author(s). 

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