“My give a damn’s busted….”

The statement above was in the form of a window-sticker on a shiny, late-model jacked-up F-150 Ford pickup truck, ahead of me at a stop-light on an off-ramp in Escondido, CA.

Now why in the name of god would somebody want to advertise their utter lack of human compassion? Especially when they’re living in one of the wealthiest nations (and neighborhoods) in the world, driving a vehicle that gets about 13/17mpg city/hwy and is rated 3 for CO-2 emissions at a time when their country is bogged down in an unwinnable, $3-trillion war over oil, and global warming is an undeniable and increasingly frightening threat to the survival of human culture as we know it?!

Just what terrible injustice has twisted the undies of this well-heeled driver to the point that he or she no longer gives a damn? And doesn’t the monster vehicle they’re driving alone convey that message well enough?

The window-sticker showed up roughly an hour-and-a-half after two other incidents made me question my viability in this culture. The first occurred in front of our local Von’s. On the way in with my 87-year-old dad, I’d noticed a man and woman gathering signatures at a card-table and because the guy had been asking people if they were Democrats, I foolishly let myself believe their petition was progressive. On our way out, I approached the table and asked what the issues were.

“Are you a Democrat?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said.

“Do you want to switch parties?” he asked?

“Absolutely not,” I replied, my hackles rising.

He went on as if he hadn’t heard. I missed whatever the first issue was but the second got me. “You want to protect marriage from gays?” he asked.

“No!” I replied, starting to turn away. “And your question offends me.”

“Offends you?! What, do all Republicans offend you?” he continued.

Ignoring the implication that all Republicans oppose same-sex marriage, “Yep,” I replied.

“Well all Democrats don’t offend me,” he lied. “And we need to keep gays from marrying.”

“Well good luck with that,” I said, walking away now. “Cuz you’re on the wrong side of history.”

He shouted toward me, “Well I’m not worried: God’s got my back!” I could only shake my head as I got into my car, shaking with anger.

I wish I’d been more articulate—I rarely think fast on my feet, especially when angry and there are few issues that make my blood boil as much as the fundies attacking our families. As I drove away, I recounted the exchange to my dad, who’d missed much of it. “Well, that’s not the way my God would feel,” he said. And once again I thought of how the bigots have hijacked religion in this country and turned it into a perversion.

As we neared my dad’s house, I found myself trailing yet another shiny, like-new Ford-150 pickup—they’re ubiquitous in this area. I was admiring the cool green color of this one when for no apparent reason, the driver pulled to the side of the road. Thinking he was going to chat with a golfer who’d left the course we were passing and was approaching the truck, I turned on my left blinker and pulled around him. As I did so, he started to roll again but I just pulled ahead, then made a quick left on the next street. I looked into my rear-view mirror just in time to see the huge pickup bearing down on us. The guy had turned left to follow me and accelerated until he was inches from my rear bumper. I thought he was going to run us down.

He rode my bumper for the next half-mile, until I pulled into my dad’s driveway. At that point, he slowed in front of the house, to make a point, then roared off.

I have no bumper stickers( yet) on my car to explain his aggression. And I don’t think the driver witnessed the encounter at Von’s, though I’m not sure.

Basically, I have no idea what I did to make this testosterone-fueled insecure maniac so angry he almost ran down my dad and me. But it made me think: in three-and-a-half years in Ireland, among many, many drunken Irish males, I almost got into a fight only twice, and both those times involved me on my bike foolishly confronting aggressive car drivers.

I’m not sure I’m ready to be back in the U.S.A.

[Cross-posted at The Bilerico Project from the Homeland.]

“God wouldn’t create somethin’ less than perfect, now, would He?

The words above, uttered in a Southern Californian drawl by the large woman cutting my hair as we chit-chatted about baldness—of all things!—caught my attention and hit me harder than anything has so far.

I’m no longer in the EU!

In Dublin, Ireland, where I spent much of the last four years, almost no one offering a public service like a haircut would dare throw out such a loaded bomb, then follow it—as she did—with a pregnant pause during which she pointedly held my gaze in the large wall-mirror. Way back in the early 1970’s, I’d spent an unforgettable (though thankfully brief) stint with the “Jews for Jesus,” so I recognized the drill. Respond, “No…indeed He wouldn’t! Our Lord acts with infinite wisdom” or some such drivel, and off we’d be on a self-congratulatory Jesus love-fest.

Responding, as I did instead, with an uncomfortable silence and white-knuckle grip on the arms of the barber chair beneath my plastic poncho, I was readily identified as one of the damned.

So be it.

What is it that makes these obviously-insecure, so-called Christians think that God-talk to perfect strangers—or more to the point, paying customers—is acceptable? It’d be one thing if the Religious Right hadn’t turned the populist brand of American Christianity into a spiteful, misogynist, self-centered and homophobic sort of mass cult. But they have. In retrospect, I wish I’d have parried her query with something like, “I don’t believe in the literal truth of the fairy-tale myths of an ancient people who wandered the Middle Eastern desert thousands of years ago.” But that strategy seemed risky while she held in her hands the fate of my haircut.

So…here I am back in the USA after 3-1/2 years in Ireland. And wow, is it a shock in certain ways, specifically, the obvious advances made by the Religious Right. Jesus bumper stickers on every fourth or fifth car. A Republican presidential candidate who talks openly of rewriting the Constitution to be more Christian--and news commentators don't blink an eye. Even a so-called “liberal” presidential candidate who feels compelled to pander to high-profile homophobic preachers. “God bless America,” has become a standard sign-off for presidential speeches, as well as “God bless you” an everyday farewell for many ordinary Americans.

This has happened gradually enough that even those Americans who express alarm over the trend may be somewhat oblivious to its extent. Nothing like three years in a formerly-religious-now-conscientiously-secular nation to give me perspective.

And with that perspective, I find America’s sanctimonious religiosity extremely disturbing, especially in light of the stuttering economy, the widening gulf between rich and poor, and the country’s widespread and obstinate ignorance about history and the rest of the world. Add to that, a widespread indifference about the Iraq war, which has murdered up to 1.033 million Iraqis, killed at least 4,913 Americans (including contractors), displaced an additional 4 million, and driven America’s national debt to 3.658 trillion dollars (and counting).

Yet turn on the news, and you’d think the worst events facing the nation weren’t the war, a sub-prime meltdown that’s wrecking havoc on the domestic and global economies, and an absolutely staggering level of personal credit card debt among average Americans, but rather Heath Ledger’s untimely death and Britney Spear’s drug problems and custody battles.

The country seems in the grip of mass cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, you have vast numbers of people who live lavishly due to an American financial and military hegemony that ensures control over a hugely disproportionate amount of the world’s finite resources. On the other, Americans ignorant of the world’s true feelings assert “America is number one!” yet want to deport migrants who dare try to escape the poverty caused by America’s global policies by sneaking across the border to pick lettuce, dig ditches, or clean toilets.

An appallingly large number of Americans eschew Darwin’s scientific theory of evolution, yet use a perversion of it to justify their coldhearted domination over those weaker, poorer or more vulnerable than themselves. Many of the same express devotion to a Jew who (may have) preached a gospel of voluntary poverty, humility, and non-violence in the face of social injustice in a far-flung province of the Roman Empire some 2,000 years ago, then these Americans turn around and vociferously support a murderous and completely unjustified empire-building American war that has devastated an entire nation.

The hypocrisy and/or oblivion of America’s Religious Right has driven me to the point where the mere mention of God makes me want to leave the room and have nothing further to do with the person speaking. So, until the actions of these religiously obsessed individuals become more gentle, generous, kinder and forgiving—in short, more “Christ-like”—I’d like to ask them to keep their insecure, death-fearing beliefs to themselves.

[Cross-posted at Bilerico.]