They Fired the First Shot 2012: An Observation

Image:  Amazon.com

It appears that extremist, fundamentalist Tea Party-types have discovered a new book that absolutely fascinates them. 

It's title:  They Fired the First Shot 2012. 

It's author: "A Friend of Medjugorje."

What are Tea Partiers saying about this book?  

Red River Tea Party spokesperson, Laura Bilderback, wrote the following:  

"If you have not read They Fired The First Shot 2012, you need to read it. There are several themes. A review from Amazon: I got a pre-release copy of this book and after reading the back cover first - which asks not to thumb through the book but start from the first page on - I lived an emotional roller coaster. I kept thinking there is no way the author found an answer - BUT HE DID. AND not just one answer but several. I have never ever been so excited about a book because it gave me a game plan. Something "I" could do. So many other books talk about their answer but it's too overwhelming. This author has made some astounding discoveries and when pieced all together in a time line, your jaw will drop. You have got to read what 'the powers to be' are planning for our youth - it will make you sick! Don't just buy one copy, buy several and get everyone reading them at the same time so you can gather later and start making plans. Things are in place NOW for these solutions to work - you need to get this book in everyone's hands."

This vivid description prompted me to further investigate the book. 

Amazon.com offers the following synopsis of They Fired the First Shot 2012:

"Publication Date: August 25, 2012 - Chinese warrior, Sun-tzu, taught that in order to win every battle, you must know yourself and you must know your enemy. We know that the United States of America is facing an attack unlike anything it has ever experienced in its history. Why are we losing battle after battle in the face of an all-advancing evil? It s because we don t know ourselves and we don t know our enemy. After reading They Fired the First Shot 2012, you will learn how to know yourself, you will learn how to know your enemy, and you will know what to do. But will you do what this book shows you to do? After reading They Fired the First Shot 2012, you will not be able to keep yourself from following the directives contained within. You will read and learn many new thoughts and truths that will have an atomic bomb effect on your thinking. What you abided by before is not what you will continue to abide by. They Fired the First Shot 2012 is not just another book telling you what is going on. It is the only book that is a complete book, showing you the first step to the last step of what to do to protect yourself, your family and save our nation. As you set out upon the path this book will lead you on prepare to be stunned, then shocked; prepare to feel helpless, then hopeless, moved to the edge of despair, then seeing a turn-around that maybe there s a way out, growing hopeful, to full confidence, to feeling the impulse to begin formulating your own personal plan and finally, taking action that grows into a full-scale reaction of having your future placed back into your own hands again. This book will become your cause to act, to spread, to promote, with all your effort, with all your being to save our nation. It is the solution that no one else has. Most importantly, do not look through this book. It must unfold for you starting at page one, reading page by page. If there ever was a read not to peek through, this is it. You will ruin the impact of the book in how you will graduate from page to page in understanding the next page. Do not even look at the chapter titles in the beginning. Just start reading...from page one (after reading the foreword)."

This description did not strike me as a standard Amazon.com book synopsis. 

These facts became evident as I was reading the online book description:

• The summary, as written, contains many, many basic grammar errors
• Rather than summarizing the content of the book, the author of this synopsis dictates to the reader what he/she will think and feel while reading the book, implying a schizophrenic-like change in mood during the physical reading process
• The author of this synopsis claims that this is "the only book" that can "protect" and "save" the reader, the reader's family, and the United States of America
• The author appears to have made important decisions for the reader regarding "all-advancing evil" and the reader's "enemies" 
• The author insists that the reader does not know him/herself
• The author gives specific warnings to the reader regarding the exact, literal manner in which the book is to be read, and provides specific "directives" to be followed by the reader

I thought I had misread the synopsis, so I read it again.  And again.  Shocked, I finally had to admit that it reads like the incoherent ramblings of a cult leader. 

 

I thought about the number of Congresspeople, state legislators, governors and local leaders who subscribe to the Tea Party's ideology regarding our American and world governments...

Then, I read the customer reviews of the book.  I invite you to read the "favorable" reviews here.  WARNING:  Many of the comments are extremely disturbing. 

 

Thankfully, there are a few sane comments/warnings on the website for potential buyers of this unsettling book.  They are designated as "one-star" reviews.  I'll leave you with the lucid, succinct, well-researched book reviews here.

 

As one commenter stated: "It's disturbing, misleading, and a source of great misinformation. If you have it, I would dispose of it."

Twilight of the Old White Guys

Credit:  Mark Morford's Notes & Errata

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Mark's Bio

 

This doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be smooth or fun or make any sort of cohesive sense. Not by a long shot. And not for a long, long time.

But across the board and down the line, the take on Obama’s astonishing, historic re-election is the same: America is more wildly, unexpectedly diverse than ever, and those diverse voices – Latino, gay, black, immigrant, female, et al – somehow coalesced into a potent, vociferous, albeit hotly unstable coalition to vote more powerfully and more passionately than any time in our short history, mostly because they never really existed as a functioning coalition in our short history, until now.

This is what the Republican punditry and even many old-timer Dems are coming to terms with: America is no longer a nifty, sepia-toned melting pot kept anodyne and marginal by the rich, starchy bleach of the white ruling class.

Is it not the most astonishing thing? The country is not getting any whiter, older white bigoted people are helpfully dying off, and we now have a messy and nearly incomprehensible Catherine wheel of assorted nonwhite minorities (and women) all spinning, dancing and surging into the limelight – not to mention the cross-breeds, the already mixed, the racially unidentifiable who are, say, a quarter black, a quarter Chinese, a quarter Indian, a third polyamorous and a tenth Cuban kinky hipster lesbian schoolteacher, with a no-religious-affiliation kicker. Sweet.

This is your new American majority, each and every one of whom terrifies the old guard, the rich white guys, Ted Nugent, Bill O’Reilly, and the way it used to be. And this is why the Republican party threw every repulsive weapon it had at Obama to try and avert the inevitable; deep down, they sensed their own imminent obsolescence, even if they didn’t quite believe it was possible.

And oh, they tried everything. Racism. Birtherism. Sexism. Abortion, birth control, “legitimate rape” and irresponsible “sluts.” Religious intolerance, homophobia, xenophobia, Socialism, Communism, Nazis, Kenya, monkeys, Big Bird, gun rights, tax laws, welfare, elitism, oil shortages, health care reform that would secretly herd up and kill the elderly. Just for starters.

Nothing worked. Check that: It all worked. Just not as well as it used to. As one distraught fundamentalist Christian activist said, “It wasn’t that our message didn’t get out. We got the message out. But our message was rejected.”

The face of imminent obsolescence?

Is this a good thing?

This is, of course, a very good thing. On the other hand, it’s also all flavors of potential bedlam, with every group and region now demanding its own representation, its own voice, its own right to stir things up and be heard. Or maybe they just want what the white menfolk have had all along: a more honest chance, and a game that’s not rigged against them from the start. I know! The nerve!

So here we have Obama’s 2012 America, a riot of color and noise, melodrama and fierce clamoring for attention. Can it all possibly hold together? Not a chance. Does it have to hold together lest we implode and melt down even further? Without a doubt.

This is why the reaction to Rainbow Bright America has been, to say the least, exhilarating, and strange, and all over the map. Say what you will about unhappy white males running the joint for the last 200 (or 2,000) years. At least they were consistent. Consistently intolerant, patriarchal, oppressive, ruthlessly capitalistic and just a little bit sad? Of course. What the hell do you want from paranoid, monochromatic Christians, enlightenment?

One point everyone agrees on: The channels must open. We must broaden the social lens, appeal to the wider spectrum, understand there is no longer a single religion, voice, sex, color, attitude, or even standardized marriage format that rules the land. Sure, we’ve always been diverse. But we’ve never been completely guided by it.

Is part of the answer to become more multicultural, multilingual, open-ended? It would seem to go without saying. It would seem we should begin, quite directly, with education, and immediately require Spanish, Latin, passing fluency in German, maybe a little Chinese, just in case. Don’t you think?

Praise Jesus, we no longer have a single dominant religion. Even Christmas, which used to be relatively charming and quaint and even a tiny bit sacred, was sold to Wal-Mart for scrap something like 30 years ago; everyone knows we have no major holidays left that aren’t owned by corporations that openly hate you.

Hence, would it kill us to learn a little about, say, Diwali, India’s breathtaking festival of lights? How about Dia de Los Muertos, and Samhain, and Buddha’s birthday? How about teaching kids a little about Christian mysticism, goddess lore, a hint of Wicca, toss in a few of the 3 million Hindu gods? Why not?

You disagree? Oh right, like hammering them with uptight Christian doctrine for all these years has worked so well. Do you want to see the election results again? Shall we talk teen pregnancy rates, divorce rates, just who it was who sent out the most racist, hateful, intolerant Tweets after the election? Didn’t think so.

I know a little of what I speak. As a not wildly young, indo-European white guy myself, I can testify that it is both scary and oddly refreshing to slide so dramatically into the cultural minority. And we’re certainly not all bad – far from it. Of course, I’m nowhere near as endangered and obsolete as, say, the Catholic church, who is right now trying – quite miserably – to wrap its crusty, blood-caked talons around the throat of giddy gay marriage and choke it to death.  (Oh, by the way? This is how you know. This is how you understand you are on the right side of history, culture, love. When the pope and his armies of flying monkeys shake and fume so violently over a new definition of love that their eyeballs curdle, you know you’re doing something very right indeed).

Let us not get too carried away. White ruling classes aren’t quite gone yet. Obama still won a huge and relatively normal percentage of white voters, and Romney got quite a bit more (although, interestingly, the four states with the highest percentage of them – ME, VT, IA, NH – all went for BO).

It’s just that they didn’t matter as much this time around. Not nearly as much as they mattered to Mitt Romney and the GOP, for whom scared white males in particular were the foundation, lifeblood, the meaning of all goddamn existence. And when that meaning is removed? When that long-standing, ironclad political underpinning is uprooted and proven no longer reliable, and never will be again?

You get shock. Awe. Bewilderment. And roughly 4,000 political pundits from every media outlet spinning in the grave of their stunned analysis. Awesome.

But most of all, you get to experience something we in America just don’t get to enjoy all that often. We get to experience the wonderful, terrible, completely disorienting thrill of remaking ourselves anew, changing the conversation, exploding the stagnant American experiment and assembling it into something we just haven’t had the parts to attempt before.

Isn’t that fantastic? Isn’t that destabilizing? Isn’t that what the warped American idea is supposed to be about, after all?

Study: 20 Percent of U.S. Adults Have No Religious Affiliation

 by Sandi Villarreal 10-09-2012 | 9:40am 

Image: DBE

One-in-five adults in the United States — and a third of adults under 30 — say they have no religious affiliation. The numbers are out in a new report called “’Nones’ on the Rise,” put out by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. That 20 percent of the population is up from 15 percent just five years ago.

But while our church membership rolls may be shrinking, “unaffiliated doesn’t necessarily mean wholly secular,” said senior researcher Cary Funk at the Religion Newswriters Association Conference in Bethesda, Md., on Saturday. 

In fact, two-thirds of the 46 million Americans self-identifying as having no religion also say they believe in God. And 21 percent of them say they pray every day. A large portion of this group — 37 percent — say they consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.”

The increase in disaffiliation goes hand-in-hand with an overall lack of trust in American institutions across the board, from the government to the news media, and now, to our houses of worship.

The “nones” overwhelmingly say religious institutions are too concerned with money and power, and 67 percent say they both focus too much on rules and are too involved in politics. 

So where are the “nones” coming from? That uptick in those checking “nothing in particular” comes largely from a shrinking number identifying as evangelical or mainline Protestant — a decline from 53 to 48 percent since 2007. An influx of Latin immigration has supplanted any decline of Catholic affiliation.

But another source is simple generational replacement, as the unaffiliated are overwhelmingly concentrated in the millennial generation.

Millennials Drop the Labels

Pew Forum senior researcher Greg Smith said not only are millennials more likely to be unaffiliated, but “they’re more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at their age” — meaning, the group is unlikely to change as they get older. 

Thirty percent of millennials overall (age 18-31) identify as unaffiliated. But when you break that down to younger millennials (age 18-25), a full third of our youngest voting bloc says they have no religion. 

This is in large part to the fact that unaffiliation among parents is on the rise. Much of the millennial generation was raised in household with no religion. 

Political implications

The group —which also includes atheists and agnostics — largely swings left. More than six-in-ten say they are Democrat and 38 percent identify as liberal. And that divide is on the increase.

In 2008, 75 percent of the “nones” voted for the Democratic candidate, up from 61 percent in 2000. “In the future, unaffiliated vote may be as important to the Democratic party as traditional religions are to the Republican Party,” said John Green, senior research adviser for Pew.

The unaffiliated — as with young Millennials — don’t vote at the same rate as those in traditional religions, and neither candidate has been able to mobilize the group. 

But the “nones” are the Democratic Party’s single largest religious group. If mobilized effectively, they could become critical in November.

Key statistics

• 88 percent of “nones” are not looking for a religion
• Since 2007, unaffiliated have risen from 17 to 24 percent of all registered voters who are or lean Democrat
• The number of unaffiliated has increased consistently across demographics — college educated and not, male and female, high and low income, and in all regions of the country.
• Only 27 percent of “nones” say they do not believe in God or a universal spirit.
• 52 percent of “nones” say religious institutions “protect and strengthen morality” compared with 76 percent of the U.S. general public
• 72 percent of “nones’ say abortion should be legal in all or most cases
• 76 percent of “nones” say homosexuality should be accepted by society, and 73 percent say they are in favor of same-sex marriage

Sandi Villarreal is Associate Web Editor for Sojourners. You can follow her on Twitter @Sandi.

My thoughts on equality...

Equal rights are equal rights, and everybody deserves them - regardless of what the POTUS or talking head du jour says.

The politicians who promote pro-hate legislation are the very same guys who claim to be freedom-loving, neighbor-protecting, Christian values-having "Jesus freaks." There's your hypocrisy.

Creating laws that oppress the freedom of others has always been the historical bane of our country's existence...and the ultimate irony of our codified American stance on liberty & freedom.

We would all be better served by focusing our energies on important issues that are keeping us unemployed, poor, uneducated and dying. ~DBE

Photo:  DBE

Forget the Money, Follow the Sacredness (How People Become Sheeple)

March 17, 2012, 6:15 pm

By JONATHAN HAIDT

"Despite what you might have learned in Economics 101, people aren’t always selfish. In politics, they’re more often groupish.

When people feel that a group they value — be it racial, religious, regional or ideological — is under attack, they rally to its defense, even at some cost to themselves. We evolved to be tribal, and politics is a competition among coalitions of tribes.

The key to understanding tribal behavior is not money, it’s sacredness.

The great trick that humans developed at some point in the last few hundred thousand years is the ability to circle around a tree, rock, ancestor, flag, book or god, and then treat that thing as sacred.

People who worship the same idol can trust one another, work as a team and prevail over less cohesive groups. So if you want to understand politics, and especially our divisive culture wars, you must follow the sacredness."

Read the entire op-ed here.