Sides

There are all manner of personal items that may be of significance, but don't end up in these missives. Those that do, are, mostly, instigated by reports from either the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts or the Lunatic Left. This time it's David French, a sometimes Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnut and other times not quite so.

I suppose I'm among a vewy, vewy small minority group that can claim three (count 'em, Three) baptisms! How can that be, you might ask? Well... here's the tale.

After I came down the chute the OB, very Jewish, removed my precious (well... according to the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts anyway) foreskin. I'm Jewish!

Soon thereafter, I was carried off to the Congregational church (my Pappy's) for the formal baptism. I'm Congo! That's how my Pappy called it, anyway.

By the time I was a tween, my parents' toxicity for each other reached liftoff, manifest in many ways, but for the purposes of this tale, clerical. Mammy would no longer abide meally mouthed Protestants. So, it was off to St. Peter's Episcopal for yet another baptism. I'm the Church of England! How Mammy managed to pull that off, I've no recollection. Of course, at that time, Episcopalians were, informally, known as Catholics in English. Now, not much difference.

The upshot of all this is two evil memes that have been around since long before meme was defined.

1 - the Jews killed Christ.
2 - Mormons aren't Christians.

Which brings us to Mr. French

There was even an insidious new twist in the post-shooting debate. A number of Christian fundamentalists online chose that day of grief — the same day that many Mormons learned that the president of the church, Russell Nelson, had died — to proclaim that the Mormon Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wasn't truly Christian.

I'll admit: I hadn't heard that bit of shit since my youth. I don't remember whether there was a Mormon church in Springfield back then. There is now, but a founding date isn't obvious. So, back then, the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts demonized those that barely existed. Figures.

Unlike French, I'm not optimistic. One side of the divide depends on facts and actual truth to the betterment of all Americans, while the other seeks only to concentrate wealth and power to its minority cabal. "The enemy within" is no way to rule in a Democracy. Not until the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts stop being totalitarians, will there be peace and progress.