Aug 24, 2005
Daily Journal of Richard E. Noble
I imagine that the only immediate value of my keeping a journal will be the fact that I will be forced to record the date each time I make an entry. This will help to keep me abreast of where I am in terms of the present century.
A journal is traditionally a record of ones personal opinions; but I am truly bored sick with my own opinions. I know pretty well what I think about most things at this stage of my life and I have also learned that most other people could care less what I think about anything.
So, the bottom line is, I guess, that this will be practice for the improvement of my punctuation and spelling along with forcing me to keep track of the day, month and current year.
I am now a journalist, I’ll have you know. A journalist, I am being taught, is a person who writes without revealing his personal opinions. My editor wants me to write in this manner, primarily, because he does not like my personal opinions.
I have recently met more journalist than ever before in my life. I don’t know why people aspire to becoming journalists. Obviously, they must make more money at it than I am currently earning.
In any case, I feel that writing for my present generation or the contemporary world is not sufficiently inspiring, so I think that I will try to write to a world 100 years from today. First of all, that would put me in a more positive frame of mind. The very fact that I think that there will be a world 100 years from today, is a positive step in itself. Also, I can talk to a future population who will look at what I’m saying, hopefully, with objectivity - or at least with historical curiosity - rather than with contemporary confusion, and political prejudice.
Right at this very moment my country, the United States of America, is waging two minor wars simultaneously. I am not going to get into the justification of these wars other than to express the hope that you people of 100 years from today, have gotten over this phenomenon.
It is sad to say but we, the human race, began another century with yet another war.
Our last five or six wars; in fact, all of our wars for the previous century, have been of a political nature. These latest two wars seem to be a return to “the good old days of yesteryear”. We are once again, it seems, fighting over religion.
Religion has to do with the concept of God, the creation of the universe, and social and sexual practices, prohibitions and mores. I only make this explanation in case you folks have somehow gotten past this point of controversy also.
Yesterday, I turned on the TV and a preacher by the name of Pat Robertson was lecturing to his listening audience. Pat Robertson is like Billy Sunday or Father Coughlin, or Cotton Mather - if you happen to be a history buff. I guess you would say that he is in the historical tradition of the type of preacher who is more concerned with socialism than with soul-shall-ism.
In any case, Pat Robertson - this man also ran for the president of the United States at one point in his career - was advocating that the U.S. government assassinate a leader of a foreign state in South America - the new dictator, or president of Venezuela. He claimed that this man was evil and that he was jeopardizing oil flow to our country.
He then conducted an instruction course on the history of the process of judicial review in our Supreme Court - which he followed with a prayer session.
He closed his eyes, took the hand of his secretary - a lovely looking black lady - and asked the home audience to join him in a sincere prayer. In this prayer he asked God to please make some vacancies on the present Supreme Court and fill those vacancies with judges who were inclined to believe similarly to him on these legal issues.
So first, he asked the president of the United States to kill - covertly - the evil leader of another country and then he asked God to make some “vacancies” on the Supreme Court.
With regards to the former suggestion, Mr. Robertson suggested that removing an evil dictator by CIA covert (secretive) action, we could save 200 billion dollars, since this is the amount that it had cost us taxpayers so far to remove another evil dictator in another country, far, far away.
Although Pat made no mention of all the lives, American and otherwise, that have also been lost thus far, I am sure that it was not just the 200 billion that had him so upset. I’m sure that he mentioned the 200 billion and not the lives that have been lost, only because he was at that particular moment in an economic frame of mind; much as a bereaved might inadvertently mention the price of the coffin or casket at the funeral of a spouse or son-in-law, for example.
Nevertheless, I thought this was questionable behavior on the part of Mr. Robertson. Even if I reversed the order of his requests and prayed that the president kill, covertly, some members of the Supreme Court and that God make a “vacancy” in the leadership of the country of Venezuela - it still didn’t sound all that good - especially for a preacher. I wondered what the reverend Pat Robertson would have thought if a large group of seemingly normal people, but of an opposing religious conviction, appeared on his front lawn or on another TV network; closed their eyes and prayed that God would make Pat Robertson vacant and replace him with someone whose beliefs were more in tune with their own.
Then Mr. Robertson “journalized” a documentary on a loving missionary husband and wife team. This couple had gone on a mission to Iraq. Their goal being to convert the poor misguided Muslim people of that war torn country to the truth of the Christian Gospels.
They were machine-gunned at a downtown street corner in Baghdad. There were five missionaries in their vehicle. Only the one lady survived. Her husband and all of her friends died from their wounds. This woman was then asked how she could find it in her heart to ever forgive these horrible, brutal Muslim terrorists who had slaughtered her husband and friends in downtown Baghdad. They were missionaries and they were simply going about the holy and proper business of trying to save the souls of these misguided Iraqi people - who were obviously lost in the poverty and ignorance of some pagan belief. They simply wanted to introduce them to the truth of the Christian Gospel.
Well, she told Pat, that it was not easy, but that her and her husband truly loved these Iraqi religious indigents and that Christ had taught her to forgive. The woman who had only a piece of her left hand remaining, along with a small portion of one lung, did not say when or if she would be going back to Iraq to continue her mission, but I for one wish her god-speed and the best of luck.
Pat then held hands with his lovely ebony secretary and prayed that all people of the world would be endowed with the spirit of this kindly woman who clearly possessed an over abundance of “Christ’s forgiving legacy”. He prayed that we should all be willing to turn the other cheek and forgive our enemies because this was the true message of Jesus, the Christ and Savior.
At this point in Pat’s monologue there was no mention of the suggested assassination of the new (or old?) president of Venezuela or the prayed for “vacancies” on the future Supreme Court.
What a show - the greatest show on earth - one might say, with apologies to Barnum and Bailey, of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment