How religious crackpots in Washington scared the bejeesus out of America

I'd never make a good atheist. Due to my romantic attachment to the mysterious I have a tendency to go agnostic on everyone. When I experience more than my share of precognitive dreams, when synchronisity seems as common as the cold, and when circumstances sometimes defy reasonable explanations, I find it difficult to deny the possibility of a greater power. However, naming that power is not something I'm prepared to do, though neither am I ready to write off God, Jesus or the Bible as complete works of fiction. How terribly agnostic of me. Yet, when I'm exposed to the sort of extreme religious fanaticism as we've witnessed recently my benefit-of-the-doubt default begins to come unglued.

The appalling and grotesque three ring circus engineered by religious crackpots and neo-con opportunists in Congress and the White House over the Terry Schiavo tragedy is only the latest example of religious fanaticism at its worst. Today we find the Washington ringmasters and much of the Floridian sideshow impresarios have packed up their virtual revival tents and slipped off into the night leaving the parents of Schiavo and a dwindling and rather pathetic looking band of followers to pick up the pieces. Such shameless abandonment speaks volumes about what degrees of integrity are to be found among the Christian Talaban presently occupying our nation's capitol. Finding that a vast majority of their fellow citizens are repulsed by their macabre behavior, that they have finally gone too far with their far-right fundamentalist agenda, the Christian Talaban suddenly find other pressing business. Nevermind that their gruesome display of zealous exploitation should never have taken place, they compound the sin by bailing on the victims.

We have a long and sordid history of such behavior here in the U.S., so long and sordid that incidents like U.S. Congressmen passing legislation to subpoena a witness whose brain is dead, or plotting to hold some sort of hearing by her deathbed seem no more surreal than any of a growing number of self-parodies consecrated by these far-right zealots. All this would be just so much all-American gruesome entertainment if their theocratic agenda in DC wasn't so chilling.

Now that all the legal challenges in the Schiavo case have been exhausted and public opinion has turned against them, where will the Christian Talaban erect their circus tents next? Perhaps on some elementary school playground where a teacher has refused to teach so-called creationism. Perhaps at the site of some book-burning where the righteous indignation of the far-right condemns the likes of Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, or Sponge Bob dvd's into the fire. But, wherever they go they may never shake the image of themselves that we have witnessed in the past two weeks. Like fanatical crackpots on city street corners raving that the end is near, the bizarre behavior of the far-right fundies have led millions of our neighbors to hope that the end is indeed near, at least for the Christian Talaban.