Jesus As Reagan's Sidekick

You've got to love those hilarious folks who somehow manage to combine fanatical Christianity with Libertarianism. Of course, one must have no understanding whatsoever of both to believe that they can be upheld simultaneously. (If you are wondering what Jesus would think of free markets, then I'm wondering whether you know anything at all about Jesus.)

So here is a very inventive blog header whose hapless author is trying to resolve the painful contradiction between worshiping free markets and worshiping Jesus:

As we can see, this particular Reagan fan chose to put "Ronnie" first and Jesus second. I kind of feel sorry for Jesus because playing second fiddle to Reagan, of all people, is quite insulting.

P.S. In the very top post of this freaky blog, I found the following sentence that tells us all we'll ever need to know about such folks' scary brand of religiosity:

 I had a lot of sinful years without Christ but God is in the business of forgiving sins.

What I wonder is whether God is successful in business and whether he pays any taxes. I know that Jesus wants us to pay taxes, but does he pay any himself? This is what theologians need to be working on.

Osama's Porn Collection

No matter what religion a fanatical fundamentalist belongs to, he is still going to turn out to be a damn hypocrite. I'm sure that after all their sex scandals, Evangelicals are happy to know that they are not alone amongst the most fanatical representatives of world religions. It might even turn out that Osama's porn collection overlaps with the ones enjoyed by the most rabid preachers of Christian virtue. Here is an article about the porn that was discovered in Osama's compound:

The pornography recovered in bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on condition of anonymity.

If bin Laden hadn't gotten himself killed, he could have easily run for office as a Republican candidate. The guy was obviously hypocritical enough for that. 

Yet Another Instance of Hatred Towards Women by Ultra-Ortodox Jews

We keep being told that Israel needs to be supported over Palestine because if Palestinians are ever granted independence, their treatment of women will be barbaric. That is undoubtedly true. Israel's attitude to women, however, is just as hateful and demeaning. The gall of the Haredim woman-haters is such as to allow them to erase female leaders from press release photos. 

This is how the photo initially looked

And this is the sanitized version
with the images of Hillary Clinton and Audrey Thomason
photoshopped out

I don't want to hear anybody come here to screech about the so-called religious sensibilities of the nasty freakazoids who insulted women in this way. If they find the photo hurtful to their fanatical feelings, they could have avoided publishing it altogether. However, in our Western Civilization women now play an important role in all areas of existence. It is extremely insulting to have our reality that we worked hard to create being manipulated in this way to satisfy a bunch of miserable woman-haters.

Today, on the anniversary of the USSR's victory over the Nazi Germany, I want to remind my Jewish brothers and sisters that a very short time ago somebody also found their very existence insulting and attempted to erase them all from existence. 

Slavic Paganism

On January 21-25, 1998, Pope John Paul II visited Havana. His visit elicited such a wave of popular enthusiasm that it became obvious how little the Communist Party of Cuba managed to achieve in terms of combating the religious feelings of the Cuban people. Things were very different in the Soviet Union where the majority of the population let go of their religious allegiances with a notable ease. In the 20ies and the 30ies, people whose families seemed to have been deeply committed to the Russian Orthodox Church for centuries happily destroyed cathedrals and burned religious images. 

One of the reasons for this difference in the religious attitudes of the Soviet people and the Cubans lies in the history of how they came by their religious affiliations. In Cuba, Santeria integrated Catholicism, Yoruba religion and the traditions of the indigenous peoples. The resulting mix helped people experience catholicism as their own, since most of concepts that have currency in Catholicism could be easily explained in Santeria terms.

The Slavic people came by their Christianity in a very different way. In the late Xth century, Vladimir the Great, the grand prince of Kievan Rus, started casting about for a religion to which he could convert his people. He approached not only Christians but also Muslims and Jews with a request to be told more about their religions with a view to a possible forced conversion of the Slavic people to one of them. Islam didn't work for him because, even though it allowed one to have several wives (a huge bonus for Vladimir), it prohibited alcohol, and that was definitely not going to be acceptable. The Jews were rejected because Vladimir didn't feel like allying themselves with people whose loss of their land signaled, in his eyes, that they had been abandoned by God.

So Christianity was chosen and mass baptisms of Slavic people were conducted. Of course, nobody made any efforts to explain to the people what was going on, why their pagan rites had to be abandoned, the statues of their gods destroyed, and a religious tradition that was completely alien to them had to be accepted and practiced exclusively. Slavs were converted to Christianity through mass killings. Entire towns were burned alive for refusing to accept this alien religion. Christian churches were purposefully built on the sites of pagan cemeteries. This, of course, made any genuine popular acceptance of Christianity quite impossible.

For centuries to come, Christianity would be a huge divisive force in society where the rich and the powerful accepted it as their religion while everybody else still practiced pagan rites and only went through the motions of Christian traditions to avoid persecutions. Paganism was not only a system of beliefs for the Slavs. It was a way of finding a shared language with the nature that surrounded them and the climate that wasn't making their lives easy. Forced Christianity took all that away and gave very little in return. Until the Revolution of 1917, Russian Orthodox Church was a profoundly oppressive force in society that celebrated its extremely expensive rites with great pomp and allowed its officials to live in incomparable luxury. (As we all know, these folks picked up right where they left off after the fall of the Soviet Union.) 

People, in the meanwhile, still retained a worldview that was deeply pagan even though they might not have remembered this word any longer. Prevented from venerating their pagan deities, they developed an attitude where the political leaders of the country were treated as such substitute deities. Today, this attitude towards politicians in charge of the country still persists in those of the Slavic countries where Christianity was imposed in this uninspired and violent way.

Communism As a Religion

"Religion is the opium of the people," Marx said in his Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right published in 1843. (I looked this up on Wikipedia and I'm not ashamed of confessing it.) The Communist leaders of the Soviet Union took this statement to heart and invested the Soviet brand of Communism with very obvious religious overtones.* This made it a lot easier to convert a very backwards, ultra-religious country to a new Communist religion.

Just consider the following facts:

Just look at this picture that in the
USSR we saw on a regular basis. Does
it remind you of anything?

1. Communist ideologues were always presented as a kind of a Holy Trinity where, instead of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you had Marx, Engels and Lenin. 

2. Holy remains of saints were always central to religious practices of the most backwards denominations. When Lenin died in 1924, his body was embalmed and preserved in a mausoleum so that people could visit his remains and pay their homage. It was considered a duty and a privilege of every Soviet citizen to walk by Lenin's remains at least once. I've done it and I don't know any other person who grew up in the Soviet Union who hasn't. The Russian government still spends a significant amount on preserving Lenin's remains because there are too many people who oppose interring the poor guy's body (or whatever is left of it). Lenin's remains still have pride of place on the Red Square. When Stalin died, his remains were also embalmed and added to Lenin's in the Mausoleum.**

3. In a Russian Orthodox home, there was always a corner called "beautiful" (which carries the same meaning as the word "red") where religious images were located. After the October Revolution, religious images were removed from these right-hand corners and substituted with images of the Communist Holy Trinity. Just like with the holy images, people would light candles in front of the triple image of Marx, Engels and Lenin (or Marx, Lenin and Stalin.)  The number of "inspirational stories" we have read about young Pioneers (you do know what it means in the context of the Soviet Union, right?) removing an old grandma's religious images from the right-hand corner and placing Lenin's portraits there was overwhelming. And, come to think of it, very Derridian****, too.

4. In a profoundly Pagan culture that was forcibly converted to Christianity (as all Slavic cultures that still preserve their Pagan customs and allegiances were), it was important to offer people Communist equivalents of their Pagan deities and traditions. This was done very successfully in the Soviet Union. As we all know, Pagan  sexuality is very happy and exuberant***, while Christianity was always very repressive sexually. The official Communist ideology would snag people with their "a sexual act should come as easily as having a glass of water" propaganda of the 20ies, only to collapse into an extremely Puritanical culture of the 60ies and the 70ies.

The main reason that the Communist ideology was so successful with the backwards and ultra-religious people of the Russian Empire is that it managed to inscribe itself so neatly into the all-important belief system  promoted by the Russian Orthodox Church. It isn't for nothing that Stalin was so eager to turn the Church leaders into happy collaborators of the regime. For decades, the Russian Orthodox priests collaborated with the KGB and informed the authorities of whatever it was that people revealed in the confessional. Today, the Russian president and prime-minister flaunt their fake religiousness which is made easy for them because of their KGB credentials that they share with the top officials of the Russian Orthodox Church.

*If I somebody reminds me, I will one day blog about why this project failed so spectacularly in Cuba.

** I also want to write a separate post on how Stalin's death was perceived as an enormous tragedy even by the most intellectual and refined Soviet people. It is especially curious to examine the case of Jews who weeped over the death of a guy who was in the process of exiling them all into Siberia. There are so many topics to blog about that one feels overwhelmed.

*** I'm also dying to blog about Slavic Paganism in the hopes that a Western Pagan (Pagan Topologist, maybe?) will point out similarities and differences.

**** If I need to write a separate post about it, just say so.

The Benefits of Growing Up in a Non-Religious Environment

1. Your body belongs to you. You can do whatever you want with it and not what some guy in a confessional or behind a pulpit decides.

2. You can eat and drink whatever you like whenever you like without feeling the need to consult some incomprehensible ancient book by people who have been dead forever.

3. There is no need to wake up early on Sunday and schlep to a building where equally sleepy and annoyed people engage in weird rituals together.

4. The idea that there can be anything wrong or shameful about sexual pleasure sounds bizarre.

5. Activities like enjoying food, procrastinating and expressing emotions freely do not lead to intense feelings of guilt.

6. In your romantic relationships, you consult your desires, not dusty tomes.

7. You save a lot of money because nobody hits you up for a donation every week.

8. You don't have to waste hours of your life hearing some individual pontificate in a pompous and boring manner every week.

9. If you do kind and charitable things it's because that's what you want and not because somebody guilt-tripped you into it.

10. You don't have to make a fool of yourself by questioning the most basic advances of science.

11. If you fall out of love, you can split up instead of forcing yourself suffer through a loveless relationship.

12. If you are a woman, you don't grow up with constant reminders of how inferior you are.

13. If you are gay or transgender, you don't get demonized and rejected for that by a group of people who respect somebody's interpretation of some old book more than they respect actual human beings.

14. As an adult, you can evaluate all systems of belief and decide for yourself which one suits you best, which is always a lot more convenient than people having decided that for you when you were a baby with no will of your own. People who pontificate about the atrocity of arranged marriages forget how easily most of them contracted an arranged marriage with their own spirituality. Their parents decide for them on the basis of custom and tradition, and then they are condemned to be spiritual in a way that they might have never chosen if they had any say in the matter.

P.S. If you want to write a response on the benefits of growing up religious, feel free. All I ask is that you try to do it without mentioning the word "community."

Women Rights in Post-Mubarak Egypt

It turns out that I was right when I wrote that there was a deep vein of misogyny underlying the recent protests in Egypt. The reality of women in post-Mubarak Egypt looks grim: 

Only days into the post-Mubarak era, many women's rights activists have begun to feel suspicious that the national umbrella they rallied under, whose slogan was democracy, equality and freedom for all Egyptians, may be leaving them out. Their disillusionment began when no women were selected by the military council to be among the 10-member constitutional committee responsible for making constitutional revisions. Another disheartening setback that raises questions about the future of women's rights in Egypt is the return of sexual harassment to the streets.

Any country that does not have a "wall of separation" between the state and a religion that was created by men for men in order to subject women (any of the three major monotheistic religions fits this description) will always end up turning into an anti-women cesspool. A country that has "a state religion" is hopeless. No amount of street protests, revolutions, tweets, and quasi-liberal gushing will help it become any less anti-women. 

The first step on the way towards progress always consists of putting religion in its place and getting it out of state affairs. The place of a religion is in the mosque, the synagogue, the church, etc. A country that is not prepared to acknowledge this is doomed to barbarity.

Virgen de Guadalupe

Today is the feast day for the Virgen de Guadalupe. What a special day. Dedicated to Jesus' mom. Our mom.

I'm very excited that I get to be a part of the special mass today. I'm getting to dance. We get to use candles. And we've been practicing for weeks. It's very exciting!

I really do like my culture. Not only are we celebrating la Madre de Dios, we are celebrating all mothers. There are going to be mariachis, dancers, and matachines at mass. Very exciting. My Dad is also cooking up a big dinner. That's for after the big day. And all of our fun. :) C

Praying for Sarita and Adelita

My friend Sarita's little sister was born last night. We're all super excited! And we can't wait to meet Adelita. My tio Juan told us that she has so much hair! They already put some of her bows in her hair. :)

We're all excited, but also scared. We are all praying for Sarita. She had her surgery a little bit after Adelita was born. We're all hoping that her surgery helps her. And that her cancer will be gone soon. For good.

I can't wait until they get to move back. Please pray for them both. And their mom and dad. They need all the prayers that they can get. They are so special. Gifts from God. :) C

Dia de los Muertos

Today is Dia de los Muertos. I always think about Sarita on this day. She really likes it. She told me that this is her favorite holiday. :)

The reason for today is to celebrate our family and friends who have died. We make alters and offer food, gifts, and music to them. A really special day.

Tonight we're going to mass. And having a celebration at our house. It's important to remember all of our family. Even if they have died. It's really important. I like this day. Because we get to remember them, and celebrate their lives. :) C

Happy Easter!

Today is Easter! It's such a pretty day too! We already went to church and to brunch. Both of my abuelitas look beautiful in their new dresses. :)

My Dad made us each an Easter basket. And we're getting our Easter dinner ready. We're having a lot of friends over this afternoon. And we're doing the big Easter egg hunt at our house! I'm really excited!

But I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter! Our Lord has risen for us. It's a beautiful day! Because Jesus loves us! :) C

Holy Week

This week is Holy Week. And our 2nd week off of school. Last week we were on Spring Break. This week we don't have school because it's Holy Week and I go to a Catholic School. But my Dad had to go back to work. He has to work until Wednesday.

We've been going to church almost every day during Lent. We go Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday nights. And on Sundays. I go every morning for school. My Dad and my Nana go on Wednesdays at lunch time too!

But we all enjoy going to church. This week, we are going every day. I wish my Nana was going to be here for Easter. But she is going to visit her family. We're going to miss her. I'm going to miss her a lot. Because I don't have school this week. Last week, she came over a few times. We cooked and baked. And she helped me with my sewing. We had a lot of fun! :) C

Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday. My Dad went to church with me this morning. I go to a Catholic School. We go to mass every day before school. This morning, my Dad came too! And we got our ashes. It's the beginning of Lent. Papi Rene told use not to look at it as a sad time. Or even a time to give up stuff. But a time to do better. To do nice things for people. And make a better effort to pray and meditate every day.

I decided to practice every day for an hour. And to help my Dad and abuelitas more. I'm also going to volunteer at church. I think that would be a good deed to do.

I was happy to get my ashes today. It was weird to see so many people at church. You never see that many people there. But it was nice to see them worshipping. :) C

Feast of the 3 Kings

Yesterday was the Feast of the 3 Kings. And after mass, we had everyone over for dinner. And to celebrate the 3 Kings. Even Papi Rene came. It was really neat. And we had Rosca de Reyes. It's a bread that they bake a baby Jesus into.

Whoever gets the baby Jesus, they have to have the party for the Candelaria. That's on February 2nd. It's also the last day of Christmas at church. My tio Jose got it! It was really funny!

But we had a fun night. It's neat to hear all the stories that my Abuelita, Dad, and Papi Rene tell. I learned a lot! And mi Tia Amelia was tell us stories about when she worked in the bakery in Mexico! I'm glad we celebrate these things. :) C

Feliz Navidad

It's Christmas Eve! I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. This is such a special time of year. Tonight I'm singing Ave Maria in the Children's Mass. I'm really excited! Last year, I got to be Mary.

Our Christmas tree is up. And all of our presents are wrapped. My Dad has been making lots of yummy food. I can't wait to eat our Christmas Eve dinner tonight!

Merry Chirstmas! I hope you get everything on your list! :) C