Blood for oil : The Christian Coalition way

Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition, a radical right-wing organization, and host of the television show the 700 Club, has called for the assassination of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez (via Atrios).

Now, I've seen this show many times on television. In fact, after Seinfeld and the Daily Show, that is my favorite show on tv. They air it around 11:30 at night on what else .. the Fox Family Channel, after the children are safely tucked into bed, although I would have thought they would want the children of this country watching this marvellous, magical, educational heap of piety.

The show consists of the good Reverend, talking about God and love and reaching out to Jesus, making Jesus a part of your life and being a good Christian and so on and so forth. Intermittently, there are news breaks, where current events are analyzed through a Christian point of view. And by his side sits this angelic looking woman with a halo, wearing a skirt demurely reaching just upto her knees (for anything higher, that would not be a Christian thing to do), who looks as if she were entirely at peace with life and the world, and who you assume has been fed on freshly churned butter and red apples and everything else that is nice and good and decent in nature. And sometimes, there is also a freshly scrubbed, cherubic young man in a suit and tie, emanating a healthy glow, who in spite of being in the throes of wild and unGodly youth, looks as if he would be more at home going around door to door selling bibles to brown people. And everyone radiates such harmony and benevolence towards all mankind, that while watching, I frequently weep uncontrollable tears of joy and faith into my beer.

But the section of the show that is the most interesting and on the cutting-edge of modern scientific technology is where the Rev. Pat seems to go into a trance and somehow communicates directly with God (or one of His Minions), and God (or the minion) informs him that there is a woman in Ohio whom, in his infinite compassion, He has now cured of diabetes. God might or might not give the Rev. Pat her name, although the Rev Pat does not give us her name, no sir, he would much rather keep that to himself. Then, he broadcasts the breaking news of the miraculous cure of this woman on his show, the audience learns that there is a woman in Ohio who does not have to watch her blood sugar level anymore, cries of "Hallelujah" and "Praise be unto the Lord" ripple through the land, all the poor suffering female diabetics in Ohio, who are watching the Rev. Pat Robertson pontificate, run to their cookie jar in a wild post-diabetic orgy of glucose celebration, polish it all off, mysteriously fall into a hyperglycemic coma and die.

I can sense that some of you might not believe this actually happens on American cable television. All I can say to that is, welcome to 21st century America.

So, that was a brief introduction to the wonder of medical science that is the Rev. Pat Robertson. But that is all beside the point. The point here is that the Rev. Pat, who has a sizeable number of followers in this country and appears to suggest to us that he is a good decent Christian, is encouraging President Bush on-air to assassinate the President of a sovereign nation. Check out his reasoning:

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."

The doctrine of assassination? Assassination isn't a fucking "doctrine", you self-righteous prick, assassination is murder, plain and simple. Pray do not, for the love of God, bestow upon it an aura of respectability by calling it a doctrine. But ranting apart, what he is saying is, it's economically more sensible for the US to just kill some guy than start a war. Note that he doesn't justify the killing of this one guy by saying it might save a number of innocent lives, he is just concerned with saving money.

"This is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly.".....We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Mmmm oil...my favorite food. And green, my favorite color. A combination so wholesome, so delectable, it could only be divine. Christian compassion, trumped over by a country's addiction to black gold. And the greenback. You know that a country's lost all sense of perspective and moral direction, becoming a whore to capitalism when it's religious leaders masturbate to amorous visions of flowing rivers of cheap gasoline and a booming economy.

And hey, when the religious leadership is so bewitched by the voodoo of oil, can you blame the political leadership of the country for being so too? After all, the president claims to be a man of faith.

Update : Funny, but in recent days, the Rude Pundit and I seem to be having our rants perfectly synchronized. Here he is, as usual, raising the art of polemic to a whole new level.

"Robertson wants the U.S. to assassinate legally-elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Ain't that what we call a 'fatwa' in other contexts? Or should we just call it more bloviation and bullshit from a man who's been buggering Jesus on live television for decades?"

Couldn't have said it better myself.