Taking advantage of the weak-minded
I usually just delete forwarded emails, but this caught my eye. I received and read some remarks
purportedly made by a televangelist's daughter today. It doesn't matter who made the remarks or what people were thinking when they forwarded it into cyberspace. People mostly know how I feel about cluttering other people's inboxes with politics and religion and offers of larger organs.
But this particular message caught my eye for another reason. It hits on a nerve. I think it's no wonder people are pissed at the media in general because the news isn't news anymore and advertisers and political action groups have been given a right-of-way over the interests of America.
Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show.
[In reference to the September 11th attacks], Jane Clayson asked her, "How could God let something like this happen?"
Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.
And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
(add nauseam)
Profound? Insightful? If there were profound or insightful
elements in this dispatch, they were well camouflaged.
Let me get this straight. God has now begun to withhold blessings and protection,
permitted terrorists to kill thousands of human beings because the majority of Americans simply don't trust its government to manage our religion (or lack thereof) for
us? Really? Is God that mean-spirited a gentleman?
Never mind that one of the fundamental themes in the Constitution and
supporting writings is that the government should not be trusted.
Religious persecution was one of the driving forces behind the formation of the
USA. But that's not even the point here.
It is precisely this flavor of contrived propaganda that divides people. These comments, when read through, aren't thoughtful, logical or even intelligent
-- nor does the author use any level of reasoning ability. The comments aren't persuasive to the thinking
person, but heartening only to the weak-minded who believes trusting the
government is a good thing. Political pundits and talking heads pile layer after layer of this non-information into the news cycle, not to share fact-based information, but to pray on perceptions of simple folks who don't really think about what is being said,
targeted really toward the sound-byte society that the so-called 24-hour "news" channels
perpetuate.
It equates to propaganda and it pisses me
off. We, the general public, may well be complacent, but it's no reason to load us with this kind of stupid
crap and it is inexcusable by responsible citizens.
