GOD "BLESS" AMERICA

What is the deal with Christian Nationalists and the flagrant abuse of scare quotes? Seriously, guys, if you are want to emphasize a word, please use italics or boldface or underlining, or some combination of these legitimate techniques. This really oughtn’t be so hard to grasp.

Moreover, why do these right-wing-nuts believe America should be blessed rather than damned? Either the Haggard/Dobson/Falwell crowd is correct in claiming the nation has turned its back on God (making Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads right, and properly prophetic) or else America is on the narrow path and warrants divine blessing rather than cursing. Either we are minding god or we are damning our country, but (for the love of god and country) please make up your damned minds!

"GOD" BLESS...AMERICA!

If I have only one pedantic pet peeve on proper writing, it is the confusing misuse of punctuation, such as using scare quotes for emphasis or perhaps using ellipsis for mock suspense. America! Whoa...I didn't see that coming.

If I've one pet peeve pertaining to piety, it is invoking one's "god" (whatever that term means) to smile down beneficently and solely upon your own nation. Ugh.

Do theists really believe that than an all-seeing, all-knowing, immaterial magic mind which transcends space-time itself really cares overmuch about national borders? Did the colonial-era cartographers who arbitrarily sliced up the Middle East (among other bits of the globe) change the way the "gods" treat those people? Did the Louisiana Purchase commingle the divine wrath or favor of those in the original colonies with those living in the untamed wilderness?

If such questions give pause, one should consider the reflexive and unthinking credulity in implicit in calling divine blessings down upon the nation in which you happened to grow up by praying to the god that your parents taught you never to question. If you grew up in Persia, you'd be calling down Allah's curses against us even now, and your faith would be no less unshakable nor more grounded in fact. As Will Rogers said "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."

Photo credit:
daveknapik