God Is Boring

This time of year--by which I mean Christmas, which got its start as a quaint tribal ritual but is now a "season"--is a mercifully God-free zone. At least it used to be. This was the Magic of Christmas! The secular reigned supreme! Media busied themselves with stories about shoppers and shopping, while the whole country threw itself into a massive effort to buy stuff and redistribute it amongst themselves. Some, charitably, redistributed it amongst "those less fortunate."

["Those less fortunate" is of course a euphemism for "victims of racist oppression and corporate greed."

How the local news stations loved to air footage of the indigent gratefully accepting the spoils of consumerism by proxy! Their moist eyes reaffirmed the American faith in materialism, for the have-nots were more aware than anyone that the true meaning of Christmas lies in cheap crap made by indentured slaves in China. They were also aware that, starting on December 26, nobody would give a crap about them anymore, for the next eleven whole months. A glance inside the charity grocery bag of dented, off-brand cans of creamed corn told them it had already sort of begun.]

So, while a nation carrying $800 billion in credit card debt celebrated the Season of Retail, we usually got a God reprieve. Occasionally there was even the odd Constitutional feel-good moment, such as when some court decided that in an enlightened society an electric plastic Baby Jesus doesn't belong on the City Hall lawn.

But not this year. No way José. Ever since the American voters informed God--by which I mean Christian American God, a guy who expanded his franchise from a zany little Middle Eastern concern to encompass a global dominionist patriarchy--that he represents a majority, it's been nonstop God, God, God. All God, all the goddam time. Even reliable old Christmas isn't putting a sock in it. Smirking theologians are infesting the talk shows with political monologues, and smirking politicians are infesting the talk shows with religious monologues. The news media has turned into church.

The Jesus guys, the politicians, the journalists--they're all goons for the same pulsating, amorphous lump of sanctimonious America-God baloney, and if it weren't for the 80's-style metal-framed glasses favored by the first two groups, you could hardly tell'em apart. The Jesus knobs all go on TV and just make shit up, whereupon the journalists treat them with pious deference. As though religious lies should carry more weight than regular old secular ones! And these are the gasbags in charge of American opinions!

And my god, they're so boring! This is the outrage that taxes my outrage-management skills to the utmost.

Traditionally my official policy re: people's moronic philosophical beliefs has been somewhere between "live and let live" and "I don't give a crap." Think virgins can have babies? Be my guest! Believe God created the earth several billion years after it was actually formed from cloud of primordial hydrogen and helium? What do I care? God says you're a Chosen One? Mazel tov! Just stay off me.

But now that God is a boring politician and a boring journalist, this town's not big enough for the both of us. He's being dull in my personal space. I might not mind so much, but God, I hate to break it to you, is also an asshole. Maybe his mom was a drunk, or he got picked on in school, or he's going through a bad divorce. Either way, it's hardly my problem; the guy's petty beefs with France and homosexuals and stem cell research are boring the crap out of me, and I just don't need that kind of baggage in my life right now. So screw him.

And screw the evangelical, homo-hatin', racist-ass horse he rode in on.