The Christian Right’s Persecution Delusion

Believe it or not, the recent threat against my life has reinvigorated my desire to blog. I poked around on the WordPress forums to see if there was a procedure to deal with this sort of thing and I guess you’re not really “somebody” in the blogosphere until you’ve received death threats on your blog. So I guess this means I’ve finally made it! I’d better keep blogging so as not to disappoint all the people from New Jersey who claim they’re going to come to Montana to kill me.

One group of people at whom I roll my eyes even more than little kids who think they’re going to intimidate Marxist bloggers are Evangelical Christians who have the delusion that they’re being persecuted for their beliefs. Over at one of my favorite Montana blogs, 4&20 Blackbirds, there is a great discussion going on about the latest antics of one of these dorks, Senator Shockley, and his latest masterpiece of legislation which “basically…makes sure the protester isn’t harrassed by the persons entering the clinic” (obviously a clinic that performs services which religious wingnuts would want to protest, namely, abortions).

Besides the obvious logical response this raises — that if you set out to harass people, you deserve to be harassed yourself — I have to ask the question: who exactly are these poor mistreated abortion protesters who are being harassed and intimidated by women seeking abortions? Are there really a lot of women who just walked out of the clinic after having an abortion that go on a rampage?

Or is it just these fundamentalist Christian lunatics trying to justify their fantasy that they are persecuted for their beliefs by getting legislation on the books that would make the state government apparently agree with that delusion?

I have no problem with people having their right to demonstrate protected but it honestly makes me sick, as communist and an atheist, to hear these crybabies going on and on. I’ve said this before but I’ll just make a few comparisons here. Christian fundamentalists routinely get their type elected to government all the way up to and including the President of the United States. They have powerful lobbies that get legislation passed to push their extremist morals onto everyone else. Now, when was the last time a Communist Party member was elected to a national office? You know what we get? Thrown in jail. Look up the Smith Act. Go on Wikipedia and read the biography of Gus Hall. Last I checked no one has ever done 5 years in prison for being an evangelical Christian. I’ve never heard of states outlawing fundamentalist Christian churches or passing legislation saying that Christians can’t be public employees. Yet these things have happened, and in some cases continue to happen to communists.

This persecution delusion is so ridiculous. But the truth is that it’s a wondeful motivational tactic. The minions of these millionaire preachers get whipped into a fervor, thinking that their backs are against the wall and that they have to fight to save their way of life from an imaginary enemy, when the truth of the matter is that they are one of the most powerful and frightening movements in the United States today. Persecution? More like persecutors.

Death threats, awesome!

So it was only a matter of time before I got my first death threat for this blog. If you scroll down to the latest comment on my “Revolt with a Vote” post, you’ll see this gem. But I’ll copy and paste it here for you:

Communist scum. Watch your fucking ass because I have no problem killing you. There is revolt brewing and you are on the losing side. Get the fuck out of Montana if you value your life.

Of course, wordpress gives me plenty of tools to identify assholes like this. I don’t have anything to pin down exactly who this hateful fellow is, like his name and address. But I do know that his e-mail is elohim757@gmail.com, his IP address was 68.38.147.199 at the time which would make him a user of Comcast in the vicinity of Plainsboro, New Jersey.

This is new to me since most of my detractors have been smart enough not to do something as stupid as make an illegal death threat while leaving clues to your identity. I’m sure if the authorities wanted to they could easily find out exactly who this dude is. However, I doubt there is anything seriously worth worrying about; if this guy really wanted to kill some Commies, there’s a whole office building full of them in New York which is much closer than yours truly, all the way out in Montana (but hey, if I wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, you know who to blame).

That being said, I wonder if maybe Comcast would like to know that one of its subscribers is using their service to threaten to kill people? If this guy is going to threaten to kill me I figure the least I can do is fuck with him a little bit. Maybe getting his (or probably his mom’s) internet service disconnected would teach him not to be an internet tough guy.