Indiana
Reading time – 59 seconds . . .
The clarity came to me in a blinding flash of the obvious and we can thank Governor Mike Pence (R-IN) for being the spark that ignited the flash.
We are beset by haters and Pence showed us another dimension to that, as he signed into law a bill that will allow Indianans to discriminate and to use religion as their excuse. In fact, religion won’t just be their excuse; it will be their legal justification. How proud Pence’s mother must be of him for his endorsing a law to legalize hate and discrimination. But that leaves us wondering what to do with those Indiana haters to whom Pence is sucking up.
There are haters in the North Carolina legislature, too. They think it’s a great idea to take away the right to vote from poor people and minority people. And one of their senators (Thom Tillis) thinks it’s government overreach to require food service workers to wash their hands after going to the bathroom. He must hate a lot of people, because it’s clear that he really doesn’t care about the ebola infection you’ll get. BTW – how were those McDonald’s fries?
Let’s not forget the haters in Congress who think it’s a good idea to shut down the government in some “I’m so powerful” chest thumping display of infantile temper tantrum. They actually don’t care if they shut down the USDA and FDA and you end up eating tainted food and taking poisonous meds. Lost at sea? Too bad, because the Coast Guard is on mandatory cutbacks.
Really, the haters are everywhere and they are infecting our country. Clearly, there is only one thing to do: Give them their own state. Let’s choose Indiana, since that state has the current lead in hating.
We’ll require all the haters from around the country to move to Indiana. They can buy the houses of those sensible Americans who will be moving to other states. To be sure that we don’t allow for future infections of hatred elsewhere, we’ll divert the funds from the project at the Mexican border and build a big wall all around the entire state of Indiana to keep those people and their hatred right there.
The haters will have free reign to live as they please, inventing laws that dribble hate throughout the state. Giving full vent to their hate will probably mean they will cull the herd, removing the weak haters so they don’t dilute the gene pool. It should only take three generations or so for them to reduce their numbers to just a handful of very lonely haters who may agree to an extended rehabilitation program and be slowly reintegrated into sane society. If not, we can leave them, say, Evansville, IN, a border town we can quickly enclose with parts from the rest of the state wall that we will be able to remove.
Howard Beale character, “Network,” MGM, 1976
Don’t dismiss this idea out of hand, because it might be very attractive to the poison spewers. And it just might send a message to our elected officials that we won’t tolerate their self-serving stupid stuff, that there are consequences to their words and actions and that we are watching and listening.
We’ll follow the imperative of Howard Beale, telling them,
“We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take this any more!”
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
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2 Responses to A Modest Proposal – v2.0
Frank Levy April 20, 2015
I like your idea, although I suspect there are at least three hurdles to its success:
1) There are too many haters to put them all in Indiana. I think Texas would be perfect
for the haters as there is plenty of room for them to roam freely without running into
anyone who might be less hateful. (Wait ’til you see the laws coming out of the Texas
legislature in the next few months.)
2) The haters probably have their own plan to isolate the non-haters – probably some place
like New York City.
3) The haters are now in power. They are backed by elected officials, the Koch Bros,
millions of silent “good Christians” and religious leaders who stay silent in the face of the hate.
I think we need to stop fooling ourselves into thinking this recent surge in hate, bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-Islam, and pro-religious freedom-legislation is an aberration. it is not. It is how Christianity has behaved since the time of the enlightenment. I am sure you will remember the Christian Inquisition, the expulsions from Portugal, Holland, France and England and most recently the nasty goings on in Nazi Germany.
What makes this recent wave of hate so scary is that these American Christian Talibangelists now have the political power to make their Christian nation a reality. We should be afraid, and we should be pushing back and demanding push back from religious and elected officials of conscience.
Frank Levy April 20, 2015
While I would love to see your idea take hold, I suspect there are at least three problems standing in the way: 1) Indiana is not nearly large enough to house all the haters. Remember they think there are enough of them to declare America a Christian nation. You may need to wall off Texas (and maybe Indiana, too, to house all the hater, 2) the haters have been empowered/encouraged to hate freely and openly by elected officials, the Koch Bros, the silent Christian leaders, and lots of others. Theu think they are on a roll and do not, and probably never will see the error of their ways, and 3) I suspect that the haters already have a plan of their own to set aside a state or so for those of us who disagree with their religiously motivated, un-patriotic, un-American hate. Most of all I think we have to accept that this kind of religious tyranny, bigotry and hate is a part of Chrisitianity as practiced in Western civilization after the enlightment. This national campaign of hate and exclusion while not yet as physically violent, it is not much different than the Christin Inquisition, and other autrocities committed in the name of Christianity throughout history. We have to stop pretending this recent wave of religious tyranny, this wave of Christian Talibangelism, is an abberation, and realize that it is how Christian zealots have always behaved. It is worse, and on the rise, now because they have the political power and public support to be the oppressors – in Jesus’ name.