set a watch on our lips

More and more it dawns on me that the Christian right's tendency to freak out whenever Obama is mentioned is fueling murderous hatred. Okay, I was peeved when the Christian stations/channels/cable networks ignored inauguration day. . . and continued on their coffee klatchy way...although back in the day if Bush so much as sneezed they'd be calling him God's man. But I let it go. I'm not even pro-Obama. He kinda reminds me of some snooty black guys I've worked with who sought only the respect of white folks. Kinda like a liberal version of Clarence Thomas. Except that he has a black wife...and Clarence is so hateful he can't even deal with a black white. Honestly, I've lived long enough to know these kinds of black guys. But I figure he's our president and if we pray for him God will guide him.

The trouble with the Christian right -- on TV and in churches-- is that they don't want to admit that many of their people are also pretty racist. Okay, I'm christian right and I know many white chirstian right folks who are not racist...but fact remains racism is pretty rooted in our country. And both the right and the left are guilty.

The trouble, though is that the christian right gets so dang apocalyptical about Obama. Okay, yeah, I believe in the rapture. I believe Jesus is coming soon. But I'm not going to say Obama is the antichrist. He may have some anti-christian tendencies ( God definitely hates abortion, for instance) but the whole world is in darkness. So I'll allow him to be in the dark on abortion, on certain other moral issues. I'm not into saving the world. But when the Christian right starts equating him with the end of America as we know it and the end of the world, they're fueling the fear of angry folks out there...and in this country it often means fueling the anger of certain whites.

Three small examples in point:

FIRST: old white man in local supermarket who held up the checkout line because he had bought $2000 worth of canned goods because he said the end of the world was coming. (If it's the end of the world, why buy all this food? It certainly won't last.)

SECOND: On December 31, 1999 a woman in a town near here who was otherwise sane killed herself by carbon monoxide in her closed garage because her minister had put the fear of Y2K disasters in her head.

THIRD: (This may not be quite right and we have to see what the newspapers make of it but) the guy in Pittsburgh who killed the cops because he feared Obama would take away guns and destroy the world.

One thing I've learned is that most Americans don't think things through. We believe what the pundits and our ministers say. If folks hang out with a ton of atheists, they believe what the atheists say. If folks hang out with a ton of fearful white conservative christians who think a black president is the end of the world as they know it -- which to them means the end of the world PERIOD-- they are gonna believe that.

And, they are going to get violent.

Would Jiverly Voong -- a man from a minority who has obviously adopted our gunly American ways -- have killed all those folks in the Binghamton Civic Center if he hadn't been brainwashed into believing he could get no other job? In another time, he might have gotten depressed about losing his job, but when media folks and ministers are crying that the sky is falling -- literally-- people in America (land of the guns) get violent. Heck, this fear thing is affecting everyone!

So...let us all do our part and stop being negative. IF the end is coming, let it come. But please!!! some peace, please. Some positivity. Stop feeding fear because fear breeds hatred and anger. And in a country where certain white folks still are supremacists and who are not quite used to thinking of themselves as equal to other races...much less having a black president....well, that only creates mucho trouble. So, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, all those media pundits ...and all those conservative christians.... watch your mouth. Don't feed violence. Don't make depressed, desperate people more depressed and desperate. (As I always say to the annoying bill collectors on my phone: You never know what a desperate person will do!) Don't feed crazed racist minds who might really believe it is God's will to murder Obama. And the rest of us, don't start conversations being negative and fearful. Life is way too hard as it is. Let's not feed folks' depressions. There are other things in life to talk about.