Dealing With God On God's Terms

MARK TWAIN SAID: "Strange, A God who mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness, then invented hell, who mouths morals to other people and has no morals himself, who frowns upon crime but commits them all, who created humans then places responsibility for their behavior upon them isntead accepting responsiblity himself like an honorable being, and who expects his slaves to worship him." What he was talking about, obviously, was the Biblical , Christian God. Famed American noverlist, journalist, humorist, and social critic Samual Clemens aka "Mark Twain" was, like many intellectuals, a flaming atheist, wodid not like organized religion, particularly the Christian religion, and who disparaged it incessantly, and arguably did so incisively, logically, effectively. Because of this many modern Christian conservatives would undoubtedly prefer that Mark Twain's book, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, be banned from public school libraries, and there may be a few progressives who feel the same way, because in both books Twain often used the word "nigger". Yet Twain remains, because he is simply too powerful and too great to ignore or to make vanish, even from our modern cultural stagnant morass known as "America". But stay tuned: in state after conservative state, Republicans are banning books, passing laws making the teaching of factual history, such as America's blatantly racist history, past and present, a crime, and purging all mention of gay people and racism in America from our children's education. According to conservative America, if you prefer that something doesn't exist, like, say.... homosexuality or racism, just pretend that it doesn't, hide it from children, and, Eureka! it won't! Conservative Christian America is, in short, on an insane, inane fascist rampage, culturally. Hitler would be proud of them, which, come to think of it, might be their intent. You might almost expect to start seeing gans of Bible toting CPAC types out in the streets, piling books into a pyre, and torching them, perhaps enjoying "smores" and speeches by people such as Marjorie Taylor Greene. What better way for her to share with the world her "national divorce" idea, acording to which, unless I'mmistaken, she thinks liberals and conservatives should divide the United States into two countries. Hell, maybe she has a point....Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a sort of twentieth century version of Mark Twain in terms of incisive social witticism and criticism, offered great praise for America's librarians, who generally do not have great power or wealth or political power, but who most generally defend their libraries against fascist style censorship by refusing to remove perfectly good literature from their libraries. According to Vonnegut, these are the true heroes, who protect true American values of freedom and intellectual diversity against the forces of darkness.