As writers go, Fred Reed is my favorite living stylist of all time. There are no other living writers half as charming, no other columnist comes close. You can almost see, and smell, the sweat and toil that go into producing their tiresome tracts. Fred’s writing comes across as perfectly natural, as if written on the fly before jaunting off to some remote outpost in Mexico. Which is probably closer to the truth than not. If I also counted the dead among favorite writers, I would have to also include Albert Jay Nock. But Reed still walks among the living, and so we are gifted with his thoughts on present-day happenings on a weekly basis at his blog, FredOnEverything. One such happening is the continuous war promotion on the part of the so-called Christians that, for some reason, are allowed to shape foreign policy:
“Tell me, Mr Pompeo, Mr. Pence:. Have you ever seen a child die of starvation? I have heard it described. It takes many days. Crying, crying, crying, slowly getting weaker. The mother, frantic, desperate, going crazy. The child holds out his arms, expecting as children do that their mother will do something. The crying eventually stops. But maybe you would get more of a kick out of watching one die of cholera caused by your wars. Death by cholera is quicker, but more interesting: Puking and defecating uncontrollably, crying, crying. The dehydration kills them. Neat, huh? Meanwhile, Mike, you eat prime rib in Washington and talk of the sanctity of your faith. You are a goddamned pious monster. May you rot in hell, if any.
We have Pompeo, a malignant manatee looking to start wars in which he will not risk his flabby amorphous ass also parading his Christianity. Bolton, a mean sonofabitch who belongs in a strait jacket, at least doesn’t pose as someone having a soul. And the Golden Tufted Cocatoo, too weak to control those around him, preening and tweeting. God save us.
Those of a certain age may remember Christianity as a vague though real niceness practiced by people who would have been equally nice without it. Christmas meant trees glowing with lights and a nativity seen on the town square, this not yet being illegal, and choirs of children singing carols in front of houses, carols on public streets not yet having been found unconstitutional. It means a spaniel-eyed Jesus looking skyward in sappy adoration. It was pleasant. This is not the Christianity of Pence and Pompeo. They are amoral Christians. They are cruel Christians. They are evil Christians.”
These are Christians of the Old Testament, of the Inquisition. But the specific ideology isn’t really the issue. These people are monsters with very limited capacity to employ the higher functions of their brain. Thinking is hard. Better to latch on to an ideology sufficiently strong in order to silence the conscience and the objections of their reason. The type of monster existing within Pompeo and Pence also existed in atheist Soviet Union, among the butchers of the Inquisition, and of every other bloodbath committed by one group against another. The amazing thing is that they probably sleep like babies, secure in their knowledge that God, or Science, is on their side.
