Short People

Got no reason to live.

Pssst. That Joe Max fella has another slideshow/movie dealie here that you would be well-advised to check out. Pass it on, but be discrete: a certain fascist telecom organization may be watching. And if you make those moving picture thingies, shit, give this man a j-o-b blocking and storyboarding. Do, and I'll punch up the script for scale.

And maybe its because it’s Sunday, or this particular Sunday is also such a melancholy anniversary, but Joe’s video got me thinking about Short Person Number One.

Jesus Christ.

Somewhere in New Orleans, Jesus died again.

A poor, brown man who died cruelly, alone, abandoned by powerful men who -- believe it or not -- weren't Demon Atheists or Evil Humanists.

Oh my no.

Not men who stand neutral on the subject of Religion. Who strive to keep the public square Secular so that those of all faiths, or none, can flourish.

Oh my goodness no.

The men who run our Federal Government, our Congress and our Courts make it a point of nauseating, overweening pride to let all and sundry know at every opportunity that they are blessed and highly favored by Almighty God. Bloated Christopath monsters who run explicitly on the platform that God loves them and hates fags and feminists and other ungodly Usual Suspects, because God is a White, pro-War, uber-Capitalist, American Conservative.

Men who call for political assassination in the name of God.

Who blame classroom massacres on teaching children Science.

Who positively leaped to blame 9/11 on gays and the ACLU.

And since NOLA was their wettest dream come true, it’s hard to understand why they’re hiding from it?

These are people take to their crusty beds every night having gotten down on chubby knees and prayed like Hell for Hell on Earth.

Who view the deaths of sinful billions at the hands of their Chick Tract, Nuclear Zeus of a god to be a wonderful thing. An end towards which they should bend every effort.

This is the Party run by men who are explicitly pro-Armageddon. A Party that is run – run! -- by gruesome, soul-dead, wind-up shitboxes like Tom DeLay, who believes that American foreign policy in the Middle East should push events in the direction of Judgment Day whenever possible. Run by a President who launches his Post Modern Crusade by ignoring facts when they fly in the face of simpleton theology, and the advice of real, expert human beings, in favor of the voices of his Higher Father in his head.

So what was Katrina but a glimpse inside Jerry Falwell’s deepest midnight masturbatory fantasy? A little patch of Heaven that James Dobson begs his Deathgod to visit on our fair, green world every single fucking day?

Hell, it even came with a not-so-dry-run of The Rapture, where the Economically Righteous were spirited away to Glory...and “those people” were Left Behind to tender mercies of flood, thirst, disease and gators.

These are the men that run America, and in a few days the body of the man they call their Savior will be found trapped in an attic or under a bridge. A poor, brown man who died cruelly, alone, abandoned and will be buried -- unnoted and unnoticed – in a pauper’s grave.

Years from now, the sheriff who will find him, and the coroner who will tag and bury his body will remember him for one, singular feature.

“His face,” they’ll say. “It wasn’t angry and it wasn’t scared. It was just...sad. So unbelievably sad.”

And they will not know that the Risen Lord died to the sound of foul water lapping all around him. To the distant helicopters and screams that tapered off into prayers that finally tapered off into silence.

They will not realize that He died knowing full well that He had told His Faithful – unambiguously -- in the very Book that Dobson pounds so freely and on which Bush took his oath as he was sworn into office twice, that "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"

They will not understand that He died heartbroken, wondering how much clearer He could possibly have been.