The Civilized States of America and Jesusland

The Civilized States of America
and Jesusland

by Martin Willett

Why are Americans such assholes?

Obama's Brave New World

Recently there has been a change in America, a division into two camps. One is civilized, modern, forward-looking, pluralist, liberal and admired. The other is Jesusland, the cultural desert that voted for George W Bush, a monoculture of religiosity, a land of large waists and narrow minds.

“We have the ideal opportunity to wipe out terrorism. Never before has the whole world faced up to to the brutal reality of terrorism like this. [] The scenes from New York this week should be the final wake up call. There is never any glamour in terror. It is never justified to attack a democratic society with violence under any pretext.

There might never again be the chance for NATO and Russia to fight alongside each other against a common enemy. This opportunity should not be wasted or abused. Firm but fair, hard but well targeted. The response of America and her allies must be well measured. The current situation in world affairs is teetering on a knife-edge between the possibilities of eradicating terrorism as an International scourge and the prospect of an upwards ratcheting of tension and an escalation in terrorism across the Islamic world.

If George W Bush and Colin Powell keep their heads and respond to this outrage intelligently the world could be a safer place for freedom. If they fall into the all too easy mode of bombing easy targets in hot blooded revenge then the world may be entering a new era of terror and barbarism on an unprecedented scale. The stakes have never been higher. Never before has so much leadership skill and judgement been required of a man with so little obvious talent for it. We can only hope that he receives good advice and is not presented with any dangerous options.”

Martin Willett September 13th 2001

What an opportunity.

What a bloody waste.

Bush says he has earned political capital and he intends to spend it. Well that's not what happened with 9/11. He didn't earn it and it's all spent now, and then some. Dubya seems to be very good at spending more than he's raised.

There was the ideal opportunity to build a consensus to rid the world of terrorism through a uniting of all or at least the vast majority of nations on the planet against terrorism. He blew it. The invasion of Iraq without an international consensus destroyed all the good work his father did in building an Anti-Saddam coalition and it threw away all the goodwill that America had picked up without effort due to the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

George W Bush is presiding over a lurch to the right and a lurch backward several centuries to a reactionary theocracy. America under Bush and the Christian Reich can have no friends, only vassals or grudging allies. Such a country does not command respect, it simply demands it, a bully nation throwing its weight around not because it is right and the world knows it but simply because it can.

The South Has Risen Again

Jesusland: The Confederacy is Born Again

There are two Americas.

The rest of the world has no doubt about which one they prefer.

The America we love is tolerant, outward-looking, progressive, liberal and civilized.

Oh yeah, and smart too...

	State	Avg. IQ	2004
1	Connecticut	113	Kerry
2	Massachusetts	111	Kerry
3	New Jersey	111	Kerry
4	New York	109	Kerry
5	Rhode Island	107	Kerry
6	Hawaii	106	Kerry
7	Maryland	105	Kerry
8	New Hampshire	105	Kerry
9	Illinois	104	Kerry
10	Delaware	103	Kerry
11	Minnesota	102	Kerry
12	Vermont	102	Kerry
13	Washington	102	Kerry
14	California	101	Kerry
15	Pennsylvania	101	Kerry
16	Maine	100	Kerry
17	Virginia	100	Bush
18	Wisconsin	100	Kerry
19	Colorado	99	Bush
20	Iowa	99	Bush
21	Michigan	99	Kerry
22	Nevada	99	Bush
23	Ohio	99	Bush
24	Oregon	99	Kerry
25	Alaska	98	Bush
26	Florida	98	Bush
27	Missouri	98	Bush
28	Kansas	96	Bush
29	Nebraska	95	Bush
30	Arizona	94	Bush
31	Indiana	94	Bush
32	Tennessee	94	Bush
33	North Carolina	93	Bush
34	West Virginia	93	Bush
35	Arkansas	92	Bush
36	Georgia	92	Bush
37	Kentucky	92	Bush
38	New Mexico	92	Bush
39	North Dakota	92	Bush
40	Texas	92	Bush
41	Alabama	90	Bush
42	Louisiana	90	Bush
43	Montana	90	Bush
44	Oklahoma	90	Bush
45	South Dakota	90	Bush
46	South Carolina	89	Bush
47	Wyoming	89	Bush
48	Idaho	87	Bush
49	Utah	87	Bush
50	Mississippi	85	Bush

The figures may have been massaged a tad (OK I admit it, they're faked) but anybody who knows anything about America knows that this characterization is a reasonable approximation of the truth. The states that voted for Bush are those where you would expect poor white trash to live. Bush's America is the land of lynching and roadkill suppers rather than the land of innovation, technology and creativity. Bush's America is the America of religiosity not generosity. The land of capital punishment not capital investment. Bush's America is the land where most people only travel abroad because their unit gets posted.

Bush's America is a land of SOBs in SUVs.

Bush's America is the land where people extol the virues of marriage and get divorced twice as readily as the liberal New Englanders.

Bush's America is the land where blacks are far more likely to end up in the electric chair than a professor's chair, more likely to end up in jail rather than college.

Bush's America is the land where ignorance and faith are more important and more highly regarded than knowledge and science.

Jesusland

Jesusland is narrow-minded, bigoted, obnoxious, reactionary, xenophobic, profoundly and proudly ignorant and full of hate.

The Civilized States of America were settled by Episcopalians, Catholics, Lutherans, Puritans, Methodists and Jews. Jesusland was settled by the fanatic Protestant descendants of the Scots who were kicked out to Ireland because they were too uncivilized, uncouth and dangerous to share the same landmass as the English. The religion of the South, of Jesusland, is the religion of those who feel saved because they declare themselves to be saved and superior. It is a religion of bigotry and exclusion that generates a culture of bigotry and exclusion, a culture that values faith above science. Jesusland is the land that for the first time in the history of human thought made the word liberal an insult.

If Jesusland fell into the sea nobody outside would care.

If Jesusland was on fire we wouldn't bother to piss on it.

Osama Bin Laden flew planes into buildings in the Civilized States of America, he probably knew nobody outside America would have bothered so much if they had crashed in Houston or Atlanta. Jesusland doesn't care for the rest of the world. The feeling's mutual.

“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

H.L. Mencken
Baltimore Evening Sun
July 26, 1920

Jesusland is not the only name for the sorry states of America. It's also known as Dumbfuckistan.

Would you be happy to live in a theocratic state that puts faith and religious observance before knowledge, education and science?

Americans: you have my sympathy.

Why People Believe Americans Are Stupid

That was then. This is now.

Obama's Brave New World

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