CHRISTMAS SERMON

One of my friends, a Jewish person who is a refugee from the Great Redneck Heartland as well as a berserk afficionado of the Grateful Dead, has flung an accusation of non-inclusionary bigotry at me, probably inspired by the Christian Forgiveness customary this season.
Dude, nothing is more inclusionary than fruitcake. Candied green cherries?
Come on!

He overlooks that I am, at heart, a product of Calvinist culture. We are exclusionary. Which means that there must always be one group at least that I can and will hate.
That being Republicans.

And after four solid years of the Republicans screwing us over, condoning police brutality, encouraging Nazis, and lying through their teeth while robbing the country, it became inevitable, humanistic, and absolutely, utterly, logical to do so.


They're an easy target, and I'm lazy.


While I appreciate his Rebbe Nachmanesque sense of forgiveness, I do not hold with that. Rebbe Nachman teaches us the need to replace hatred with love. Sorry, I'm Dutch American. Not Jewish. I do not turn the other cheek. Do I need to remind y'all that the Dutch wiped out an entire island for strictly practical reasons? Sailed up the Thames and sank the British fleet? Introduced scalping for fun and profit to the Indians? Invented donuts so that generations of weak-willed Americans would die of diabetes?

We are a practical people. We can tolerate. We do not forgive.
Meaning that we accept that other people are flawed.
And we will grudgingly put up with all that.
Until we do something about it.

We are not fruitcakes. In fact, we envy the Vikings, who raided the coasts of England and Scotland during the Great Depression to destroy the fruitcakes. Learn your history!


Just because you are a mellow stoner does not mean I have to be one.

In other news, I hate Hobbits too, dislike the entire Lord Of The Rings weltanschauung, and do not spend my days contemplating my navel or trying to improve the world one joint at a time.


"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers."

------Jules


Fruitcake, gottenyu. I can't think of anything more repulsive.
That wich is lukewarm, neither hot nor cold.
Kill it with fire.



In other news, I reread 'The Chosen' by Chaim Potok the other day.
In some ways it reaffirmed my faith in humanity.
Of which, btw, there isn't much.



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