Point of View from a Safe Distance

This was originally written as a comment on vjack's blog to his entry titled, Bush calls for national day of prayer His reply to an earlier comment prompted me to write this. I don’t often post the same material in two places, but this bears repeating and I am curious to see what comments it might bring.

Vjack,

I think you have identified the problem. Unfortunately, there is a very rich and powerful group of morally bankrupt elitists that know how to wrap themselves in the mantle of Mother Church, and push people's buttons in general. It is very difficult to combat this well-organized, well-funded, and self-serving machine. One thing that we can do is to resist every effort made to sanitize this tragedy.

Religion is one of their most powerful tools because it teaches subservience and the opposite of self-reliance. Add that chemistry to the loss of decent-salaried, manufacturing jobs, and you have a formula for chronic poverty and the creation of a servant caste. Service Economy... and who are the ultimate "servees"? The new aristocracy of course. This is why all the "God" sound bites come out when a faith-shaking event like this takes place; damage control.

Fortunately, there are still many people, religious or not, that are smart enough to run for the fire extinguisher when they see flames and not stand around and wait for the man with the clip board to tell them what to do.

The best way I can describe the Federal response is to call it a deadly cluster-fuck. I guess it is too much to ask to expect the incompetent to take responsibility for the deaths their incompetence caused and resign. The last time I suggested that, someone said, "but that would create a leadership vacuum, and create more hardship!" Crap. These people are incompetent. Their replacements could hardly be worse.

Vjack, thanks for your posts. I have donated to Oxfam America, and I found out about their involvement in this tragedy thanks to the link your blog provided to the American Atheists site. If there is anything I can do for you directly, please don't hesitate to ask.