GOD vs. MACHIAVELLI

So Giambi took steroids and lied about it, and surely it is just a matter of time before he finds himself among friends….(Barry…Sammy? Who’ll be the next in line?) As MSNBC’s Mike Celizic points out, no one should be surprised at this turn of events. Rather than taking the usual tack of bemoaning the ceaseless tarnishing of the national pastime, Celizic cuts right to the heart of the matter:

"Our problem is that we want our heroes to lie to us…. the reality is that we don’t want the truth. As the line in the movie goes, we can’t handle the truth. When we’re shopping for a home, we want the salesperson to convince us that if King Arthur had known about this bungalow, he’d have abandoned Camelot. If we admire an athlete who’s suspected of using drugs, we want that person to tell us he or she is as pure as the driven snow."

For the most part Celizic confines his thesis to the sports world, but I was immediately taken with his argument and its intersection with the current goings-on in Washington these days. It seems that our capacity to not only accept but to unconsciously crave The Big Lie is running rampant across all of society.

Just a half-hour prior to reading the Celizic story, I was talking to a co-worker about a story that is supposed to make greater waves in the coming days: the shockingly inaccurate information being impressed upon our children in the abstinence-only sex education programs favored by this president and his minions. One such program, taught in our public schools, basically stated that the ability of condoms to reduce the risk of STDs is an unproven liberal myth. Huh??!! That’s not only news to me, that’s news to Bush’s own CDC!

From a congressional report prepared by California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman:

11 of the 13 most commonly used curricula in such programs contained unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health. Waxman's staff found the curricula included misconceptions such as a 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person," HIV can be spread through tears and sweat and condoms failed to prevent HIV transmission in 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse. Some courses teach that touching a person's genitals can lead to pregnancy, abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, and half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus.

What a crock of shite! And mark these words, this is only the beginning of the outrages soon to be thrust upon us by overzealous right-wingers in the name of public morality. So many things bother me about this, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Naturally, abstinence is the only 100% way to avoid STDs. No one questions this; that, my friends, is a funny little thing called a "fact". What is at dispute is the most effective way for this supposedly secular government of ours to combat a serious public health crisis. What is at dispute is how long we Americans will allow the truth to be sacrificed upon an altar of extremist ideology. What is at dispute is the right of the minority to live their lives the way they see fit, without being told how to live by any self-proclaimed moral majority.

This is basic Constitutional law, folks, Civics 101.

If only this problem were confined to the issue of premarital sex! Sadly, from the environment to fiscal policy to, most glaringly, Iraq, the obfuscation of truth has been standard operating procedure across every facet of this administration for quite some time now. And with all the misplaced moral-value brouhaha vis-a-vis the election, Falwell & Friends can declare the triumph of Faith over Reason with a straight face.

Do these folks sleep at night?? Didn’t one of the Ten Commandments have something to do with LYING, and, uh, how you shouldn’t do it? How does W square that with the Christianity that is supposedly his foundation?

Can one worship both God and Machiavelli?

Church and state were separated for a reason, and I’m afraid we’re only on the cusp of seeing that reason play itself out in a nasty, protracted, public battle. So don your armor and pick up your sword—for this is a battle that we must win.