Romney Is A Creepy Little Freak
Willard M. Romney has a problem. Well, no, okay, let me start over because I’ve already presented you with glaring omissions, merely one sentence in. Romney has a lot of problems. But the only one that the Republican base really seems to care about is the fact that he is a Mormon. To be clear, Mormons are an offshoot of Christianity who generally believe that rather than dying, Jesus traveled to America, and that this information was revealed to a man named Joseph Smith in the form of golden tablets that no one else ever saw, and which he eventually lost when he either forgot where he hid them or when God took them away. I’ve heard conflicting reports on that last bit.
I’m not going to get into the dogma of Mormonism, and not because I find it patently silly. I mean, I do. But no more than I find other forms of religion patently silly. If you want your website to devolve into, “My Invisible Sky Wizard has a bigger dick than your Invisible Sky Wizard!” be my guest. Me? I’m not interested. Whether it’s burning bushes or golden tablets or whatever particular peculiarity your religion subscribes to, I find one no more credible than the next. And according to Willard M. Romney, that makes me a bad American.
Because unlike myself, the vast majority of the Republican voting base he is attempting to woo is Christian, with the largest percentage (or at the very least, the most vocal percentage that turns out to vote) being Evangelical Christian. These are folks that don’t even take kindly to other branches of Christianity that follow the exact same Bible that they do, to say nothing of the radical departure that is Mormonism. And while there is legally no religious test for holding public office in America, voters can choose to vote for or against a candidate based on any criteria they desire – including the candidate’s religious beliefs. So Romney needed to find a way to cozy up to the Evangelical Christians without looking like a soul-less wretch for abandoning his own religion.
In doing so, he choose to give a speech that many people tried to compare with the address John Kennedy gave during the 1960 Presidential campaign. You see, Kennedy was a Catholic, and at one point in our nation’s history we were so religiously uptight that even a Catholic was seen by many to be unfit for the Presidency because of his amazingly minor variations on the interpretation of the Bible – to say nothing of golden tablets and polygamy. What Kennedy said in his speech, delivered to a room full of politicaly powerful Baptist ministers, was that any man who would put his religious preferences before the duty of his office was inherently unfit to serve as President. It was a powerful moment of advocacy for the separation of church and state (a phrase he used specifically).
Romney’s speech? Not so much. In fact, the speech Romney gave only mentioned Mormonism once – for contrast, Kennedy mentioned Catholics or Catholicism twenty times in his speech. And as if to directly dispute what Kennedy professed, that a President must be a President of all his citizens regardless of religion, Romney engaged in some of the most embarrassing pandering in the history of Presidential politics – and some of the most frightening. He actually said that Freedom requires Religion. Go ahead and read that again. I’ll wait.
It is apparently Romney’s belief that without faith in God, it is impossible for anyone to know freedom or liberty. Of course, he’s got it quite backward. Even a cursory review of history makes it clear that freedom is necessary for religion and not the other way around, because unless a person is free to believe or disbelieve in whatever they choose, then their religion is a matter of predetermination and not genuine faith. At least, that’s how it looks to a dirty, no good, going-straight-to-hell atheist. But Romney tried to turn that idea on its head to score some cheap points, and his message was absolute. Why, compared to all those Godless, Jesus-hating, secular heathens, Mormons and Evangelicals are practically the same!
And that’s the gist of it. I’m the enemy. I’m what is wrong with America. I’m the enemy of Freedom, because I have no deep personal relationship one of the aforementioned Invisible Sky Wizards. It’s a low yet effective political tactic – find a common enemy to strengthen a relationship between two uncommon groups. Clearly, it’s the atheists, agnostics, and secularists that are destroying America with their Not-God-Love. It’s a precise and yet common form of discrimination that gets almost no attention in this country. Perhaps in a way, Romney is right. Religion is the toll you pay to enter American politics. Some people pay gladly and willingly. The rest of us just grit our teeth and ante up.
So fuck you, Willard M. Romney, for claiming that Freedom is such a narrow, burdened concept that I can only achieve it through your pre-approved means. Fuck you, Willard M. Romney for daring to suggest that there is something inherently less valuable about my belief system or my morality or my ethics because instead of believing in a different subset of dogma than you, I believe in none at all. Fuck you, Willard M. Romney, you pandering, shifty, believe-whatever-sells shell of a human being, for questioning my beliefs or lack there-of when your measure of belief is numerically tied to whichever clowns you’re trying to dupe at the moment.
Fuck you, Willard M. Romney, you creepy little freak.
While Flip-flopping was a terrible thing for the.. 2004 election, was it?.. This year’s theme is the flip-flop. How can you convince enough people that you are most like them in dogma (politically speaking, this time), and how can you do that to very diverse groups of people. Because there are no “strong candidates” this election, the anointed few must scrape and dredge the barrel for votes. For the Primary. If political advocacy groups have any say in the matter, this is the New Status Quo.