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The New Abolitionist Meme
My Country 'Tis of thy People You're Dying
--Buffy Sainte-Marie
In the interest of the “moral clarity:” “liberals” are now “Abolitionists.” “Liberal” has become a nasty epithet and “liberals” can’t seem to make “conservative” carry the same vituperate odium, perhaps thinking, well, “conservation” isn’t so bad, so “conservatives” can’t be all bad. Notoriously fuzzy-thinking, “liberals” speak in tongues, like “vituperate odium.”
Just what the hell is "vituperate odium” supposed to mean? Where’s the “moral clarity?” Fuzzy-thinking fuzzy-talking liberals, what about God? No clear cut sense of right and wrong, no divine direction? Suppose a “liberal” recently went to the mountain and spoke with God face-to-face. God gave the “liberal” a Covenant, carved in stone by the finger of God (the good kind), and here it is:
“In the name of God, let us ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS NOW.” The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Those who doubt and wish to see the stone-tablet truth, let them first cast the stone tablets they want replicated in Courthouses across the USA. “Replicate,” of course, means “copy,” although without an original to work from, it would seem that the fidelity of the copy might be in question. New Abolitionists see the light.
There is no question about it, God spoke directly and said, “Abolish nuclear weapons.” This commandment seems perfectly clear, and those who hold up their own Sacred Text(s) might be wise to read them and contemplate the historical fate of those who do not respond to a direct order from the Allmighty. They may quibble about the source, veracity and possibility at their own peril. “Liberals,” come down from the mountain!
Secular students of history may remember the role “Abolitionists” played in the Second American Civil War. “Second?” Oh yes indeed. Lincoln himself thought there could (have) be(een) more, and approached the question of slavery with “moderation” and “reason,” appealing in his First Inaugural Address to “mystic chords of memory” and the “better angels of our nature.” Talk about a wishy-washy moonbeam liberal.
Four years and over half a million lives later in his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln mused that “…every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” Words like the Abolitionists, but taken out of context, Lincoln also cautioned that, “The Almighty has His own purposes.” The First American Civil War may not have been “about slavery,” slavery was a meme. Memes have a law unto themselves.
Memes are replicators, “complex ideas that form themselves into distinct memorable units” and make copies of themselves. Our individual brains are only necessary as hosts, and just as fire has separate components of heat, fuel and oxygen, our own individual existence is only one small gas or carbon molecule for the meme, a minimal Kelvin of energy. God has commanded the Abolitionist meme to multiply. Like Bees.
There were faithful scholars and intellectuals among slavery Abolitionists, as well as tortured simple souls like John Brown. There were atheists and agnostics, to whom the question of Right by God was debatable, but Right by Reason was not. The Massive Lie of Nuclear Weapons is as old as slavery; not the technology, of course, but the Lie itself is a meme that grew from “the way it is” to “God’s divine plan,” biblical backup and all.
The mythical “war on terror” is an oxymoron swarming with virulent memes like, “freedom isn’t free” and “flypaper theory.” New Abolitionists choke on the blue white and scarlet hypocrisy… and then as now, Jews, Methodists and Mormons may take up arms, while Quakers and Mennonites may not, and kitsch “patriotism” will dart among the shadows of fateful lightning.
The “liberal” worker went to the meeting on Wobbly legs, but came down from the mountain as a burning New Abolitionist, a migrant grape of wrath and a marching meme. She saw “The People” dance about a Golden Calf, igniting yellow magnets like skyrockets in an ammo dump. Shall the busy dancers, then, get the “war” they seem to so earnestly desire and the “troops” for whom they so earnestly pray? Perhaps she will interrupt the Sorrow.
The Allmighty has Her own purposes.
