Another amazing day in the George W. Bush Badministration, with the newly formed coalition of evangelical groups, who have Karl Rove in their back pocket, basically telling us that we have to ‘do’ something about the spread of AIDS and sex trafficking in the Sudan. At the same time, the Traditional Values Coalition is putting pressure on the National Institutes of Health to crack down on researchers awarded grants for projects on AIDS and sexual activities. The NIH has responded by cold calling the scientists and doctors, not threatening them, but just maybe making them an offer they may not be able to refuse. The researchers were all informed that although their grants may still be valid, their names were going to be available on an electronic list, the very thought of which sends a freakish shiver down my spine. I wouldn’t even think of what might happen if I were ever on an ‘electronic list.’ although if I am doing my job at all, then I am on several. But it does scare me. No, it is serious. Not a sarcastic statement in the least. Do you know what happens to people on electronic lists? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. They swim with the fishes.
What the Traditional Values people are saying is that AIDS education and research is what encourages the spread of the disease. They are doing whatever they can to stop the distribution of condoms and to silence the few voices that we have left in the continuing battle with not only AIDS, but just as deadly, the agenda of the moralistic conservatives.
Why is AIDS so important when dealing with other nations, impoverished ones like in the Sudan or Nigeria, but becomes something altogether different when we face the problem here at home? Is it because colonizing these nations under the guise of health and epidemic management is not at odds with the condescending attitude that we have toward the ‘third world’? Since they are ‘savages’ anyway and cannot stop themselves from fucking everything willy nilly without the ‘advantages’ of Christian values and morals, is it our duty as a nation to give them a slap on the dick, hand them a cross and tell them not to fuck so much? But here at home, we need to be silent and abstinent, and if we do speak of sex, it must be in defense of heterosexual marriage and chastity, and anything that has any mention of fucking, or the assumption that people will actually be fucking so might as well be prepared for the truth about AIDS, will set off a fuckwave worse than any East Coast blackout? “I am going to fuck you so hard that I make the power go out from Syracuse to Miami for three days.” To me, that ideology is savage, and irresponsible, not to mention stupid, fatal, ridiculous, living in another world where there isn’t any reason or logic – just ‘faith based works’.
That was Bush’s response to the AIDS epidemic abroad – that since Jesus H. Christ had been such a help to him in quitting drinking, he understood ‘faith based works’. What is ‘faith based works’? Is that like the faith that he needs to harvest from the religious right that make up forty percent of the voters that stoopidly voted him into office the last time – which doesn’t mean to say that he even won fairly, just that a lot of them voted for him – in order to hope that he has a chance at another term? If it is, then please God, let it not work.
If Bush doesn’t drink anymore, then that is an even scarier thought. He has been stone cold sober driving the nation head on into every type of man’s ruin this entire time. There would be no excuse for his absolute stupidity and lack of judgment. It’s just George, which would be fine if this were a sitcom pilot written on spec by some writer’s assistants, but it isn’t. It is our country, the American people, as well as the global reach that we pretend to use to help the world along. That might be a nice PAX show – an affable, but not so smart drunk finds Jesus in rehab, and gets a new lease on life, as he moves from the counselor’s office to the Oval Office. From detox to Commander in Chief! From the west wing of the hospital to the west wing of the White House!
What I have to admire about the religious right is that they know that forming a coalition is the way to achieve anything in government. They are willing to see past their own biases about the name of God and what God is doing and what God wants us to do and who the ones God likes the most is and get together. You know that they all talk so much shit about each other the second they get home and you know that they all cringe when they are forced to shake hands or call each other on the telephone, but they are still in alliance.
Everyone makes excuses about getting together for lunch, postponing dates with claims of illness or religious holidays until the original plans fade into memory and the votes have all been counted. It makes me know that the liberal thinkers need to also stop thinking so much and take our movements out of specificity, and plunge headlong into union with other political groups that we may be allied with only by the common hatred of ‘them.’ That thread of dissent is enough to hold us together, get us into office. We can sort the differences out from there. And we won’t even insist on getting together for drinks after work.