So, Glen Beck had his faux civil rights rally, gathering the faithful on America’s Lawn on the promenade in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. 1000,000 Tea Party and Glen Beck fans showed up. In other words, 100,000 morons. On the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I had a dream” speech held in the exact spot, no less.

Doctor King’s speech was a watershed moment in American history, while Beck’s was more of an irritating sweat stain on our collective armpits. Glen even claimed to be King’s “brother.” If so, then he has to be the Fredo of the King brothers

Beck and the Tea Party were never people with ideas, instead content to be angry all the time and attack other people and their ideas. Now Beck and his Tea Party fans finally come up with an idea, this rally, called “A Rededication of America,” a golden opportunity to showcase whatever policies they were able to come up with, and guess what, the only thing they could think of was a violation of the United States Constitution and the laws of the land.

Normally, the prudent course of events would be to formulate some serious ideas and policies, and then hold your rally. Even if it’s only one big idea, something to stir things up socially and politically, that would be fine too.

Their big idea? Turning America into Iran, Christian Fascist style. Beck put it like this: “America today turns back to God.” Oh, really? If he’s talking about the same country the rest of us live in, The United States of America, he was calling for a return to a special time in American history that… never happened! From its very beginnings in the late 1700s, America put religion in its proper place, far from the halls of government.

Dr. King, who was an ordained Baptist minister, never tied the Civil Rights Movement to his or anybody else’s church, and borrowed his non-violent tactics from a Hindu, one Mohandes K. Gandhi, to achieve his goals. He instead relied on the words of our Founding Fathers and challenged America to be America for every citizen. It cost him his life, but it worked.

Our Founding Fathers, none of them particularly religious people, had seen first-hand the bloody results of state-sponsored religion, and were having none of it for their brand new nation. They stated simply that Congress shall pass no laws concerning religion, rendering it a private matter for citizens to deal with, or not deal with, as they saw fit. Any and all faiths were welcome to flourish in the United States, but none of them were allowed to have a say in governing the nation.

Which didn’t stop certain Americans far too insecure in their own faith from trying to persecute other religions, most notably the waves of Catholic immigrants who came to America in the late 1800s and early 1900’s, bringing with them the “Papist Scourge.” Jewish immigrants were also treated to this lapse of hospitality.

Both groups petty much ignored the bigots and went about their business, confident that the Constitution protected their right to pray and worship as they saw fit. Of course they were correct and the bigots are forgotten by history, while these immigrants have all left their indelible marks on America. They built and ran this place as we now know it and their descendants continue to flourish, having produced war and peace heroes, Nobel laureates, poets and titans of both politics and industry.

America itself flourished with this infusion of new blood, offering an unprecedented quality of life for the working classes unmatched before or since in history. Not having a useless and demanding monarchy or a rapacious official religion to support removed a huge social barrier from humanity. Outstanding individuals and hard workers could and did climb the social ladder, something almost impossible in the monarchies and theocracies that dominated the earth in the not-so-distant past.

There are still plenty of such nations around, staining the landscape of their regions and oppressing their own people, and now Glen Beck and the Tea Party want America to join these backwards assholes and “turn to God.” Turning away from God, or at least rendering Him a private citizen, is what enabled America to build the best hope for humanity the world has ever had, and to build history’s biggest economy.

While the Tea Party has never been renowned for its ideas, what with most of them being Sarah Palin addicts and complete morons, at least they attracted the attention of a lot of people who liked the notion of a new political party, any party, just to wake up the Democrats and Republicans who figured they had a monopoly on politics in this country.

The whole idea was exciting, at least for about 5 minutes.Then one of the Tea Partiers opened their mouth and all that came out was horseshit. Dang! Then came the revelation that the Tea Party isn’t a separate political party at all, but a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, Inc.

Apparently one of those notorious closet-queen Republican operatives came up with this ruse in response to having their party unceremoniously dumped from power in 2008, figuring Americans are really, really stupid. Stupid people have long been the bread and butter of the Republicans, people who can be regularly fooled into voting against their own interests.

In years past, the Republicans employed really smart people to sell others on the notion that what is right for the super-wealthy and the giant corporations is right for America. They’ve elected some terrible presidents with that idea, but the last time around they got too cocky and installed a semi-literate bumbler as a figurehead president and just had Dick Cheney run the show.

The fact that they did this so openly and led the nation into one disaster after another is what got them ousted in 2008. Americans don’t like dictators, and were doubly insulted that our first-ever dictator was Shotgun Dick Cheney, as unlikable a human being as has ever breathed with the aid of replacement parts, like some bald and dumpy Darth Vader without the cool swagger.

So naturally you’d think that the rank-and-file Republicans would protest and go off to form their own party. Too bad for America that the only serious recent attempt at forming a 3d political party turned out to be another phony sideshow from the Republican Dirty Tricks Department. The only “leaders” it attracted were Glen Beck and Sarah Palin, two seriously unhinged individuals who are also both as dumb as your average Cocker Spaniel.

Imagine being a follower of someone like that? Wow! The mind boggles at having as your leader someone who has never made a lick of sense and never sustained an ideology they did not contradict time and again whenever convenient. On Saturday in Washington, no agenda was proposed, no famous speeches made or memorable phrases etched into American political lore.

What was it all about? Who the hell knows with these pinheads? Let’s just hope that this whole “return to God” crap doesn’t become what so many other public petitions to God have become, a bloodbath for some poor saps practicing the “wrong religion.” For now, Beck and Palin resume their lucrative careers of trashing other people’s ideas, figuring that ideas are things they never have, so it must be wrong to have one. Ask Fredo what it all means.

Now that people are accustomed to communicating with one another almost exclusively via electronic devices, even within the same room, it makes some sort of perverted sense that Internet companies are now negotiating with Little League Baseball to install web cameras at these children’s games so their parents can watch the action on their computers.

Now all they have to do is come up with a computer to play catch with your kid and you’ll never have to see the little brat in person again, and our social disconnect will be complete.

Are we that friggin’ busy these days that we have no time at all for one another, not even our own children? Nobody’s even working anymore since the damned bankers stole all the money! What’s the excuse now?

“Daddy can’t make it to your game, son. I’ll be too busy talking to my 378 very close pals on Facebook, twittering my profound political insights 140 characters at a time to the Huff and Puff Post feedback blog, and then I’m scheduled to blow your college fund on e-Trade. But don’t worry, I’ll catch the game on Hulu in the middle of the night.”

You then set your computer to remind you to text your child an attagirl or a way to go, son! and go back to your devices.

And it’s not just Americans hooked on our Captain Kirk communication devices. The German government had to pass a law prohibiting potential employers from using job applicants’ Facebook pages to judge their characters, or lack of same. What ever happened to interviewing somebody?

One can only assume that the interviewers are also unaccustomed to meeting people in person, and so have no idea how be a judge of character except by peeking at their virtual footprints on various Internet websites, which technically, do not even exist. Look up the word “virtual” some time.

Can’t we face one another anymore? Can’t we size up another human being in the flesh? How many young people grow up hunched over some electronic piece of crap playing some piece of crap game or texting their clueless friends about every half-formed thought that pops into their flabby brains?

Many seldom speak, and when they do it is usually some inarticulate code that doesn’t make much sense, so you tune them out, they get frustrated and bend back over their little electronic pieces of crap with a vengeance and the evening’s conversation is over before it began.

The internet has brought us the greatest source of information ever compiled and the convenience of shopping at home for goods and services available across the planet or across the street. It has been a blessing and a curse rolled into one, sort of like television in the 1950’s, a huge what might have been.

Local stores and the friendly local people that work in them are disappearing and nobody knows anyone in their own neighborhood anymore. That’s not because people moved away, it’s because people are leaving their homes less and less and have no idea how to relate to other human beings. People are trickier and far more unpredictable than our electronic devices, and cannot be controlled or manipulated so easily.

No wonder there’s things like road rage, where people are caught in traffic that does respond to keyboard commands and cannot be shut down, and so they lose control of themselves and lash out violently at other people, people they don’t consider any more “real” than the animated apparitions in their piece of crap video games. Why not shoot or maim apparitions?

Worst of all, there’s no record stores left since the wonderful product they sold has been replaced by electronic digital downloads, not the same feeling as leaving a record store with your own copy of “Exile On Main Street.”

Who do young people talk to about new artists or exciting new musical trends? Do they even dance anymore on the odd occasions when they are physically in one another’s presence? They sure don’t speak much. How do they pair up in boyfriend/girlfriend pairs, according to which cell phone company they use?

Good thing these kids’ hormones are churning away or they’d never mingle with other human beings and the species would die out in a single generation. It’s ironic that all our electronic devices designed to bring us all together are driving us apart. We are raising a Disconnected Generation.

So this dopey mosque issue near the site of the World Trade Center atrocity has the whole friggin’ country up in arms now, even people who never stepped foot in New York City, long-distance carpetbaggers claiming “hallowed ground” they’ve never seen, either before or after the 9/11 attack, much less bought a falafel from one of the local Muslim street vendors.

Tourists still pack the area, every one of them wanting to take a peek at Ground Zero to try to understand what it was like, to reconcile the horrific news footage seared into the whole world’s mind. In a sense, they have a powerful claim on Ground Zero, and a very real connection, both Americans and foreigners alike.

While New Yorkers endured the attack and lost so many, what we forget is that the rest of the world stood still that day, numb and disbelieving, riveted to the images of the capitol of Earth being so shockingly and devastatingly attacked. There were no other headlines or lead stories anywhere that day.

The jets crashing, the towers burning, people jumping 100 stories to their deaths, and the final, stunning twin collapses were followed in real time everywhere, and everyone stopped whatever they were doing to watch in disbelief. It was a day that will go down in history for as long as there is history.

The nearly 3,000 deaths were far lower than originally estimated, thanks to hundreds of fire fighters, police officers and many others who sacrificed their own lives to perform the greatest evacuation and rescue operation since Dunkirk. Ten times that number was considered a conservative estimate that day, when no one anywhere seemed to know exactly what was going on.

The New York City government was nearly crippled and very little real information was forthcoming, only scattered pronouncements and speculation on the part of the news media, and this went on for most of the day. The president was flying around incognito somewhere and the vice president took over, lower Manhattan was disaster area and cell phone service was knocked out.

Rumors of a dozen or more such jets were rampant, and the Air Force was reportedly hunting hijacked aircraft with missiles. The Pentagon was in flames and the crash landing of the 4th jet in Pennsylvania was thought to be  caused by our military. The uncertainty and chaos were terrifying.

A whole lot of people had a loved one who worked in the area, and the TV footage looked like no one could have survived anywhere near the collapsing towers. No one panicked but tension and confusion were everywhere, and a feeling of helplessness. So many wanted to help, to do something, but only police, firefighters and proven rescue experts were allowed near the site.

The city held its breath and waited for their land lines to ring. There were block-long lines for pay phones in Manhattan, people waiting to call their families to tell them they were okay, and to please call everyone else, there’s people waiting. Three thousand families never got that call.

We mourned our dead and still feel their loss. Wars were started to avenge them, grand pavilions planned in their memory. Services are held on each anniversary, and the wound still feels fresh. For most, there were little or no remains, loved ones incinerated to dust. Ground Zero is the only grave they will ever know.

Too bad these victims have now become political footballs, their memorial still unbuilt while their spirits are invoked by cynical fools with political ambitions. This has been going on for years, and now we have this media-driven madness over a planned mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero, right down the street from the Ground Zero strip club, a place where presumably mourners can receive some measure of solace with a lap dance from a naked young lady. To each his own, no?

The story grows more bizarre when it is revealed that the location of the mosque was actually picked by a 19-year old immigrant from Colombia who was hired by the developer after appearing on a reality show. His job was to scout locations for the mosque and he found the Burlington Coat Factory building to be vacant and available.

The deal was consummated and plans made to build the mosque as something called an “Islamic Center,” a combination house of worship and community outreach facility. Lord knows that Islam could use some good PR right about now, and the hysterical reaction to their project only underscores that. Anti-Muslim sentiment has poured out of every corner of this nation, even from people who detest New York City and the big umbrella melting pot it stands for.

Unclear so far is exactly who is providing the funds for this piece of downtown Manhattan real estate, where every square inch of space is worth a  large fortune, even in this depressed economy. Few believe that the Muslim street vendors are footing the bill from the proceeds from the sale of bananas, couscous and souvenirs. This is a big money venture and will require hundreds of millions of dollars to complete. Who’s paying?

While the Imam in charge says he will raise funds from local Muslims and bond offerings, there are rumors of Iranian and Saudi Arabian funding, making the whole thing even more suspect. These are legitimate concerns, potentially dangerous political concerns having little to do with Islam and everything to do with provocation.

Is this what’s happening? Can we be sure? Anyone on the ball with finding that out before we start messing with the Bill of Rights? It’s always the Bill of Rights that stands to take a hit in times like these, with no shortage of media fools and elected politicians sworn to uphold the United States Constitution openly in favor of violating it because a distasteful religion is ruining the neighborhood and the Hallowed Ground trade.

For a story invented and fueled by the media, there are few hard facts available. That’s how out of practice our news media is with journalism, that they can’t even find out the facts on a story they invented. They seem content to report on the shit storm they have created to fill the slow news cycles of Summertime and feel no obligation to dig for facts.

Small wonder fewer and fewer people trust the mainstream media. The impact on New Yorkers’ daily lives by the building of this mosque will be nonexistent. We’re already tripping over a thousand and one houses of worship of every imaginable denomination, barely noticing them as we go about our business.

People swiftly got over the Mormons’ building a tabernacle near Times Square, and nobody likes Mormons all that much, not even their fellow Mormons if you follow their soap opera saga in the news with the lucrative sales of underage teenaged brides to lumpy old Chesters. Times Square survived, and so will Ground Zero.

Few people will bother to notice another temple to a God we all claim as our own as we go about our day-to-day business doing whatever the hell we feel like. Most Americans figure church is for women and religion is for teaching kids right from wrong. That’s not what we say about our various faiths, of course, but what we do, the truer measure of intent.

In Islam, like Judaism, it is the men who take the lead in practicing their faith,  something that makes many Americans uncomfortable. That whole 5-times-a-day praying seems excessive and unseemly, even without the bad press Islam gets from terrorists and religious tyrants.

The fact that Islam is just one more dumbass religion designed to annoy the crap out its believers by giving them a whole lot to do on top of having to live their lives is forgotten in this war of words. Life is hard enough without God, but almost unbearable with Him, because now people feel obligated to defend  their faith and attack the faith of others, not once stopping to think that every faith is founded on some pretty tall friggin’ tales.

That’s why they are called faiths and not The Jewish Fact, the Christian Fact or the Muslim Fact. None of them can stand up to a reality check or ever be proven. Our arguments about God and religion are transparent excuses to dominate one another along tribal lines and to vent our hatred of others. God has always been a handy tool to further these aims.

This Mosque on Hallowed Ground business is just one more example of people using God as an excuse to act like hateful assholes. The 3,000 victims of this religious warfare deserve better. They were real people with real lives and real families, not abstract concepts to be cynically used for our endless debates over the improbable and unprovable. Who cares who else builds what sort of shrine where or who they pray to or how? That’s private.

Red State, Blue State, one-two-three! Facebook has become the new battleground in the ideological war between normal people and the neo-Neanderthals attempting to erase the Bill of Rights. The media-created issue over a proposed mosque in New York City has brought politics into the social networking website in a big, bad and mean way. Here’s some verbatim excerpts from actual Facebook pages, the mangling of the English language intact, no comment needed:

Comment: “attention, the pakistani relief fund just received a bag of shit from the the widows of 9/11.”

Reply: “LOL!”

Comment: “i got a great idea? america should drop whats left of its napalm stockpile on all the pakistanis who made it to the ground!!!!”

Reply: “LMAO!”

Comment: “pakistan is underwater and the United nations wants to know why the world is slow to react!!!!!!!!lol lets see maybe because most of the worlds charity comes from this region? No…..Ohh it must be that all the human rights activists are from this part of the world?I know its a nation of womens rights?I got it, it the right to free speech and vote… No…. Hmmm ohh it must be all the terrorists”

Reply: “The same went for Haiti, didn’t they get a lot of charity?”

Reply (from the same person): ‘That is, the first bits…I think they’re too broke in Haiti to be terrorists.”

Reply: “she dont know what shes talking about with that crap …We have had New Orleans under water and no one gave a shit esp ARABS in any desperate situation NO ISLAMIC NATION EVER HELPED so DROWN !! This isnt about reality and we need to stop feeling sorry for people who dont give a shit about US!!! Soooooo many other horrific floodings other than there like the MIDWEST where the f is everyone from those places!!!! Feed our Hungry, Card the foriegners who dont pay Taxes and eat for free on our tax $$$$ and those who despise US GET OUT..those who feel sorry join the peace corp and stop bitching about people who dont care about OUR Children!!!! Love the USA 911 Neva $ get!!!!! One for all and all for US”

Reply: “Oh they’re underwater? Hopefully there’s some raw sewage mixed in there. Let’s nuke them now and create a shit cloud over the whole region.”

Reply (from the guy who made the original comment): “there not defenceless, look at your friends the palestinians little ali has grade a weapons training before he changes his diaper….just think were taking care of the problem before its done breast feeding”

Comment: “The 9/11 terrorists did THIS in the name of Islam. The wounds are still open and Americans are still hurting from the senseless attacks on our citizens. The ground around where the World Trade Center once stood is SACRED. If a mosque is built at “Ground Zero”, it will forever be an irritant and a flashpoint for violence and mayhem. Most of us understand they’re building it in a respectful way… but it just shouldn’t be down there. Period.”

Reply: “Fuck them … Build it at the bottom of the Hudson…”

Reply: “God bless America”

Reply: “If you are a christian in some Muslim dominate countries under Sharia law, you are killed. Convert or die. Do not lambast me for stating a fact.”

Comment: “the premier obama is now backing the mosque at ground zero, at first I didnt think it would be a major issue especially in new york ….but it seems to be pissing off the whole country .Mayor bloomberg said be quiet and get over it, i say shut the fuk up mayor and listen to the people who elected you”

Reply: “your to much…. premier obama..LOL.. you should have a column I swear!!”

Reply: “We are now a Muslim free society. Get the fuck out. That’s how I’d word it. You know, so the masses understand”

Comment: “good for aRIzona This cOUntry hAs a COnstituTion, A Bill of rIghts anD Laws THat MuSt BE OBeYEd”

Reply: “WTF?”

Pretty interesting in a sad, crude way. Somewhere Shotgun Dick Cheney is trying to turn his permanent sneer into a smile and English teachers are wailing and gnashing their teeth.

Well, there’s good news and bad news from Canada. First, the good news is that Canada is generating news of any sort. Okay, Canada, we know you’re a shy country not given to flashy self-promotion like some North American nations (ahem!), but the rest of the world was thinking about checking your pulse. Everyone knows you’re America Lite, which isn’t such a bad thing, really.

Canada gets to unload all their pesky talented people that tend to draw a lot of attention to themselves on the USA, where that sort of thing isn’t frowned upon. Our second-tier entertainer and B-list celebrity rosters are teeming with Canadians, who we’re fairly certain would have enthralled and enlightened us with their unique artistic visions if Canadians were permitted to have such things.

The bad news from Canada? The Canadian telecommunications giant (now there’s a phrase you don’t hear everyday), RIM, the makers of the very expensive and popular (there’s one that you do) Blackberry phones, just surrendered to the censors in Saudi Arabia. How very Corporate American of them!

It seems that the Saudi Thought Police had already gotten the giant internet servers to aid and abet their interception of personal computer messages, but the advent of smart phones and their e-mailing capabilities made it harder for the minions of the royal family to eavesdrop on their subjects.

Now, Blackberries aren’t the only smart phone on the market, and the Saudi market is a lucrative one, so the head honchos at Blackberry surrendered the necessary codes to Saudi authorities rather than lose market share.

Blackberry’s American competitors have been adept at pretending to resist censorship while cutting back room deals with tyrants and kings, so the RIM Corporation cut right to the chase and just gave it up without any tedious hand-wringing or comment, Canada style, if utter lack of style can indeed be called a style.

So that’s it for news from Canada until this nation that is defined by Winter loses every event at the next Winter Olympics, even at the oddball quasi-sports like curling and ice hockey that they invented. Other than the cold fronts that blow down from there every December, you’re more likely to hear Botswana mentioned in the news than Canada before then.

So, now  THE BATSHIT CRAZY LEADERS OF DANGEROUS UNSTABLE NATIONS CLUB officially welcomes its newest member, President (for life?) of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Mr. Chavez, a classic South American military strong man long painted by the American media to be some sort of dire threat to Western Civilization but really wasn’t, has finally gone batshit crazy. Score one for America’s right wing.

While his politics aren’t all that bad, he’s a bullly, a ham and a showman who censors the press. Like a hundred South American dictators and presidents before him, he promised to tackle the curse of too many Latin nations, mass poverty in a land of plenty, the wealth of nations in too few hands.

Throughout history, every reform or attempted reform of this Spanish Empire leftover, the Padrone/Peon social order, has met with vehement and violent opposition, with most Western nations condemning the reformer in question as a Communist who will destabilize the region. This knee-jerk reaction to defend the rights of “property owners” fails to address the hard realities in South America

None of these Western Nations with the big mouths share this lopsided social system anymore, not even Spain, whose last King realized how silly it was to be a king these days and closed the franchise, possibly the first sane act by a reigning monarch in a millennium. Maybe he was thinking about the legacy of oppression and enforced subservience that the Spanish monarchy left behind in her empire, places where when they finally left after hundreds of years, were still largely illiterate, superstitious and poor, toiling in the service of an educated, wealthy elite.

These are the conditions in which men like Chavez operate. The governments of many such nations are the exclusive domain of this wealthy elite, and the poor need not aply. The only avenue to power other than birth is via the military in such regimes, and Latin America has had no shortage of delusional Generalissimos adding to the misery of their nations’ poverty while lining their pockets until the next Generalissimo shoots them down and does exactly the same.

No word on whether or not Hugo Chavez is embezzling some of his nation’s oil billions, but on July 16, 2010, you can mark your calendar as the day he lost his friggin’ mind. There’s not many mad men where you can pinpoint the exact day and time they lost it, so kudos to him on that score. Might be useful data to social scientists someday, or a question in the Venezuelan version of Trivial Pursuit.

Always a Simon Bolivar buff, on that date Chavez took his obsession with the man to a whole new batshit crazy level when he had Simon Bolivar’s remains exhumed and started playing with the skeletal remains, picking apart Simon Bolivar’s carcass with his bare hands!

Not only that, he publicy exhorted the remains in the name of Christ to return to life! He claimed Bolivar had spoken to him, telling Chavez that he reappears every hundred years. Apparently, not one of Bolivars many talents was mathematics. Having died in 1814, he’s 4 years early for his second resurrection. At any rate, no one else was privy to their private conversation.

This is Simon Bolivar we’re talking about, the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one for all of South America! Imagine an American President holding a press conference while manhandling the bones of Lincoln? That’s so bizarre, it sounds like something only Hitler would do. With all the batshit crazy leaders this world has endured, it’s hard to recall another remembered for corpse desecration.

This makes Ghadaffi seem less daffy, Ahmadinejad seem less mad, Putin less high falutin’ and Kim Jong not as Il as all that. These guys are ecstatic now that he’s joined THE BATSHIT CRAZY LEADERS OF DANGEROUS UNSTABLE NATIONS CLUB. Takes the heat off of them and their unsavory behavior in their own volatile corners of the world.

But the big question is, what the hell does it feel like to be Venezuelan right now? The stunning realization that the leader of your nation has just publicly and frighteningly lost his friggin’ mind has to be an unsettling feeling, to say the least. One wonders, is this an even worse feeling than having Bush The Younger as the leader of the free world, or not quite as bad as all that?

Chavez might get the “this-gives-me-the-creeps” edge here, since Dubya’s handlers never let him exhume any dead bodies for sport, and everybody knew Shotgun Dick was running the show anyway. Unfortunately for Venezuelans, Chavez doesn’t have a boss, and it sounds like he wants to be President of Venezuela forever with the re-animated Simon Bolivar as his Ed McMahon.

Hard to tell. Our America-centric megamedia corporations don’t report all that much about Venezuela unless it’s something that makes Chavez look bad. Well, now he’s he given them a gift that will keep on giving, his madness. Not only that, he’s given Venezuela a headache that won’t go away until he does. Maybe Simon Bolivar can talk some sense into him.

Editor’s note: There are few more horrific things than war. Accounts of battles by those who survived them are especially heartbreaking. Men who were young, optimistic and full of joy, thinking only of their sweethearts and the grand sweep of life in front of them, suddenly finding themselves in the hell that is war, so often seem baffled at the turn of events that landed them in the raging inferno of death and destruction. Their humility and reverence for human life is as moving as it is unexpected. Great big men, hardened and grown old before their time, men who performed heroic deeds and witnessed horrors thankfully spared most of us, are rarely braggarts or aggressively macho men, and so often show a sweet, vulnerable tenderness for their fallen comrades that can bring tears to the most jaundiced eye. Having never been a soldier, I can only wonder what that is like, how monumentally powerful must be their emotions, their experiences and their seared memories. No one approves of war or ever wants to fight one, yet ordinary boys have been fighting them since the beginning of civilization. I wrote this song to try to make some sense of this cruel reality, wanting it to be over forever. One of these days I’ll get around to recording it, but for now let me share these words and remember these boys:

GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

- words & music by R.R. Crespo

YOUNG, SO PROUD AND GRAVE

SO VERY CLEAR OF HEART AND MIND

TALL, AND STRONG AND BRAVE

THEY LEAVE THEIR MOTHERS’ LOVE BEHIND

TRUE, THEY MARCH TO WAR

THEY MUST DEFEND THEIR NATION’S PRIDE

LIKE THOSE THAT MARCHED BEFORE

THEY KNOW THAT GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

OLD, AND VERY WISE

A GENERAL STANDS ON SOLDIERS’ TRUST

PAIN, SHOWS IN HIS EYES

HE TELLS HIS MEN OUR CAUSE IS JUST

FIGHT, AND GLORY’S YOURS

AND IF YOU FALL, YOU FALL WITH PRIDE

LIKE THOSE WHO FELL BEFORE

WE KNOW THAT GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

MAMA DON’T YOU CRY

YOU KNOW THAT GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

AND IF I AM TO DIE

THE LORD WILL TAKE ME TO HIS SIDE

SO MAMA DON’T YOU CRY

LOVE, AND TEARS OF QGE

FILL UP A MOTHER’S HEART AND EYEYS

WHY, MUST WARS WE WAGE

WHY MUST A MOTHER ALWAYS CRY

WHY, THE GRAND PARADES

THE COLORED FLAGS, THE FOOLISH PRIDE

ALL THE DAYS WE PRAYED

WE PRAY THAT GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

MAMA DON’T YOU CRY

YOU KNOW THAT GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

AND IF I AM TO DIE

THE LORD WILL TAKE ME TO HIS SIDE

SO MAMA DON’T YOU CRY

BOLD, THE CANNON BLOWS

A THOUSAND MILES FROM HOME SWEET HOME

RED, THE RIVER FLOWS

A THOUSAND BOYS DIE ALL ALONE

GONE, A THOUSAND DREAMS

A THOUSAND OCEANS DEEP AND WIDE

AND IN THEIR FINAL SCREAMS

THEY PRAY THAT GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

MAMA DON’T YOU CRY

YOU KNOW THAT GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

AND IF I AM TO DIE

THE LORD WILL TAKE ME TO HIS SIDE

SO MAMA DON’T YOU CRY

To say that we are living in a world gone batshit crazy is merely to state the glaringly obvious. If you need reasons why, or disagree with this assessment, odds are you’ve been living in the wilderness without access to telephones, computers, newspapers, TV, radio or other people. Either that or you’re simply batshit crazier than most. Either way, that’s quite understandable, and the best of luck to you.

Meanwhile, the rest of humanity, comprised for the most part of relatively sane and decent human beings doing their level best to keep themselves and their families safe and warm in a world gone mad, just can’t help but scratch their heads in dumbfounded wonder at the extreme behavior of some of our brothers and sisters. Consider these signs of the times:

The celebration of the stupid and annoying: Brilliance, hard work and creativity used to be highly valued in this world. Apparently we got tired of all those brainy show-offs and decided to give peabrains a chance. Cases in point: Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, the wearing of pants with one’s ass hanging out, the deification of our 2nd dumbest president, Ronald Reagan, Paris Hilton, Reality TV, Ashton Kutcher’s huge Twitter following, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nancy Pelosi, George Bush The Younger, our hands-down dumbest leader, Joe the Plumber (who’s name isn’t Joe and still a plumber’s helper at 34), extreme (!) skiing, Rush Limbaugh, Adam Sandler, house “music,” Life Coaches, The Aryan Nation, the Tea Party and other jackass racist gangs, Hu Jintao, Anne Coulter, Ultimate Fighting, face-piercing, Yellow Ribbons to “support American troops” that are made in China, or any financial or automotive CEO you’d care to name on any continent, people who, for fabulous salaries, were asked only to keep an eye on the golden goose, but instead thought it would a better idea to swallow it whole.

Red State, Blue State, 1-2-3: Somehow in recent years, The United States of America, the U.S.A, became the A.U.S., the Allegedly United States. While this place has always been a big-umbella place accommodating a very broad spectrum of people and ideas, our unity was pretty much a given, with people of differing political and social philosophies agreeing to disagree, but respecting the other guy’s right to think and, as long as he wasn’t hurting anybody, to live as he damn well pleased. No more.

Not since the Civil War have we been at each other’s throats with such open animosity, constantly stooping to the scoundrels’ tactic of declaring all who disagree with them to be traitors. People on both sides of the political spectrum thought President Obama was nuts to try to promote bipartisanship, and the fact that he almost had his fingers bitten off reaching out his hand to the opposition only strengthened this opinion. The truth is, Obama is one if the few politicians these days who is not nuts, a man who loves his nation more than his political party, and wouldn’t mind a little more unity in these United States.

Extreme Religion: No one is certain whether the advent of Extreme Sports is responsible for turning much of humanity into some sort of industrial strength God Squad, but this formerly private and mild pursuit designed to teach the kiddies ethical and moral behavior and provide some measure of spiritual comfort has turned into a huge pissing contest between rabid, violent wannabe tyrants. What was once a gentle activity has become a contact sport.

Extreme Religionists are either killing “infidels” in the name of God, oppressing everyone in sight, including their fellow believers, or condemning non-believers to eternal Hell Fire. In America, they are trying their damnedest to violate the Constitutional cornerstone of separation of church and state. All of which is batshit crazy in a religion (Islam) named for peace, or one (Christianity) whose savior is called the Prince of Peace. Whatever happened to humility, forgiveness, peace, tolerance, kindness and love? That whole Love Jesus or Die routine sort of misses the whole point of the man’s message. By about a bazillion miles.

Bad enough the whole world is batshit crazy, no sense aiding and abetting the madness. Fight stupidity, embrace excellence and celebrate diversity and just maybe this will all blow over.

A recent exchange on Facebook recounted an ugly incident on a recent Summer night in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights where a woman was mock assaulted with an automobile, with the driver pretending to try to run her down and then him and his passengers laughing at her distress. It was a crazy and hateful thing to do. She angrily confronted the people in the car, only to be pelted with a couple of bottles of water. Unable to get the car’s license plate number before it sped away, she was left only with her justified fury at the young people in the car, and expressed her anger on Facebook.

Quite the spirited Facebook discussion was spawned. The fact that the occupants of the car were black and the woman was white and Jewish provoked all sorts of ugly racist comments, and an equal amount of anti-racist rebuttals. The word “nigger” was thrown around like it was still 1960, or 1860, and many incidents of black-on-white violence were recounted. “Subhuman” was one of the phrases used, even though there is no such thing.

When we use the term “subhuman” to describe another person, what it does is give us license to feel superior to others, either because of their skin color, national origin, economic status or their religion. It is one our least attractive human qualities, and an attitude responsible for more deaths and more human misery than any plague or famine ever.

Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, between the three of them responsible for well over 100 million deaths, were, as much as we’d like to deny it, human beings. So is Charles Manson, and so was Idi Amin. They were all raised and taught the difference between right and wrong by loving mothers, and educated by their respective societies. They grew up with the same values as their peers, none of whom became murdering scumbags like they did.

No one encouraged these people to become butchers of their fellow human beings, but that is what they became. To deny their humanity is perhaps understandable, but too easy. And dead wrong. There were choices made in their lives, and actions taken, that made them supremely evil people, but people nonetheless. To deny the destructive potential of human beings by classifying them as “subhuman” is to ignore the obvious; that we all have unlimited potential to become a whole lot of things, some of them quite heinous.

Were they madmen? Certainly. Did they convince others to be willing accomplices to their murderous and hateful agenda? Of course, that is well documented. Many millions of people were willing accomplices to genocide, and have been for as long as civilization has existed. Were they all “subhuman” too? Was one of the Gods we invented to justify our hatred and power lust just one more murdering scumbag when he ordered the Israelites to “slay them down to the last man, woman and child?” Sure sounds that way.

Any person publishing those words today would be rightfully lambasted, and anyone attempting to implement such heinous slaughter would be vilified and hunted down. God has always been an excuse to kill and conquer, all the words of love and righteousness notwithstanding. For every Mother Theresa, Ghandi or Reverend Martin Luther King (all of whom made excellent life choices with the exact same raw material as a Hitler or a Manson), there have been a hundred psychopathic butchers killing in the name of God.

The Jew who first pointed out this glaring hypocrisy in the Jewish texts was crucified  by his brethren for his trouble, and rewarded with having one of the most murderous and repressive organizations ever invented being dedicated to him, organized Christianity. When one reads his simple message of love, peace, kindness and tolerance, the mind boggles at the horrible acts perpetrated in his name by the “Holy Church.” Holy shit is more like it.

Then some other guy comes along claiming Abraham, Moses and Jesus as his spiritual ancestors and invents a religion called Islam, which means peace. HIs name was Mohammed. Not much peace ensued as his spiritual descendants decided that “conversion by the sword” was the way to go, conquering and slaughtering from Africa to the Pacific. That just annoyed the crap out of the Holy Church, who took a break from torturing and repressing their own faithful to to rouse a bunch of them to invade the “Holy Land” to prove that our God could out-murder and out-torture their God.

And so it goes, from all-out genocidal wars to minor racial incidents on the streets of Brooklyn. This is what humans do to one another, and most of our inhumanity towards one another can be traced to the cynical charlatans who claim to speak for God, as if such a thing were remotely possible. If there is such an entity as a God, a gnat would stand a better chance of being able to speak for us than we would have of being qualified to speak for God.

There is no religion anywhere that is not the “one true religion.” Which would be just fine if not for our human need to prove this most unprovable notion by shoving it down the next guy’s throat, even to the point of killing or torturing if that’s what it takes.

There’s also no religion anywhere that is based on anything approaching the sort of reality we experience every minute of every day. Every one of them is based on some sort of impossible fairy tale that never occurs anywhere in our human experience, and yet is believed fervently by billions of otherwise mature and intelligent people.

So we call our religions “faith” and support any number of professional clergymen who live quite well feeding on our fears and superstitions, never having to work an honest day in their lives. Priests, imams, rabbis, shamans, bishops and witch doctors (the most honest title among them) exercise an unreasonable amount of influence over human beings, people who live and work honestly and hard in the world of the real.

Unlike the God Professionals, who claim all sorts of miraculous and divine connections, it is they who perform “miracles,” miracles of science, of technology, of architecture and engineering, of letters and miraculous works of art all by themselves, no matter who claims that their efforts and ingenuity are dictated by God. And they have accomplished all this in spite of organized religion’s determined attempts to suppress and sabotage literacy, science, reason, logic and exploration.

Imagine how far along humanity could be without our various religions actively working against us?  With no “subhumans” to hate and attack, with no ideology to demonize and prohibit, with no attempts to stifle progress, we could have been working together all along to improve our lives, learning from one another, sharing our ideas, our art and our inventions for our mutual advancement and benefit.

Without our invented “Gods” and their self-appointed human tyrant representatives, we just might have avoided Colonialism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, Jihad, the Holocaust and our countless other genocide campaigns, and the plague of starvation that still claims 13 million lives every year, mostly children under the age of 5.

That’s 36,000 small children dead each and every day, most of them in Third World countries that much of the world feels do not matter since they are nations populated by lesser beings. When a person is considered subhuman, then their pain can be shrugged off as unimportant or even nonexistent, even the unbearable pain of burying one’s child who has starved to death on a bountiful planet.

This happens in a world where the God Professionals put forth the absurd notion that mankind cannot form a code of ethical behavior on its own, or discern right from wrong without them. Like their guidelines have caused anything but pain, death and humiliation. The truth is, we all have within us enough goodness, wisdom, logic and reason to find our way just fine without paying the freight to support these expensive charlatans or suffering for centuries under their boot.

We also have a huge capacity for joy and spiritual fulfillment without their input or their permission. We should neither seek nor accept their “blessings” or their permission for anything we do, think or enjoy. We know what is right and proper, and we know how to govern our affairs equitably without the fear of some unseen fairy tale entity or their alleged human mouthpieces.

Their skewed notions of right and wrong that much of humanity adheres to have led directly to our Hitlers or those young thugs in Brooklyn terrorizing an innocent woman for sport. When a person is considered subhuman, anything goes, from murder to oppression and slavery to simple harassment, and these ideas were propagated by the God Squad. Our pain has always been their gain, our degradation their elevation. Damn them all to the Hell they invented to go along with their imaginary cruel Gods.

SOMEDAY YOU’RE GONNA WAKE UP AND YOU’RE GONNA SEE THE SUN

YOU’RE GONNA LOVE ME LIKE YOU NEVER LOVED NO ONE

YOU’RE GONNA TELL ME LIFE HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN

SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY WE’RE GONNA BUILD A WORLD THAT EVERYONE CAN SHARE

THERE’LL BE NO POVERTY, NO HUNGER, NO DESPAIR

WE’RE GONNA BUILD OURSELVES A BETTER WORLD, I SWEAR

SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY WE’RE GONNA SEE THIS WORLD FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS

WE’RE GONNA FIND A WAY TO FEED THOSE HUNGRY KIDS

WE’RE GONNA BUILD OURSELVES A BETTER WORLD THAN THIS

SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY WE’RE GONNA BUILD ANOTHER TOWER TO THE SUN

I’M GONNA TAKE YOU THERE ‘CAUSE BABY YOU’RE THE ONE

WE’RE GONNA LOOK DOWN ON THE CITY THAT WE LOVE

SOMEDAY

SOMDAY WE’RE GONNA FIND A WAY TO PUT AWAY THE GUNS

WE’RE GONNA PUT THE FEAR AND HATRED ON THE RUN

WE’RE GONNA UNDERSTAND THAT WE CAN LIVE AS ONE

SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY YOU’RE GONNA WAKE UP AND YOU’RE GONNA SEE THE SUN

YOU’RE GONNA LOVE ME LIKE YOU NEVER LOVED NO ONE

YOU’RE GONNA TELL ME LIFE HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN

SOMEDAY