Thursday, February 09, 2006
Dover: A Plague of Locusts
We all laughed when televangelist Pat Robertson took a short break from exhorting the faithful to send money in order to warn the long suffering residents of Dover not to seek God's help if disaster struck their area.
We can't help but think that a slow-moving disaster really has struck Dover and the cause is God. Or more accurately, people who hear God's angry voice speaking to them through the random snap and hiss of old eight track tapes, who answer Him aloud in dark, empty rooms, and know, really know what He wants.
Job-like, the poor people of Dover have endured the breathtaking inanity of the previous school board, a bitter election to reclaim that board from the religious fanatics who'd taken it over, and a difficult six-week trial.
With the election of a new moderate board, they might have been forgiven for believing that the trials and tribulations visited on them by the bible beaters was, at long last, over.
They were wrong.
Now, Kent Hovind and Repent America are descending on Dover like a plague of locusts. God may be merciful. We don't know. But the religious right, the creationists, the intelligent design theorists are Old Testament to the core. The secular Sodom must be punished and, if God won't send a tornado, an earthquake, a great fire, something, anything... well, they'll just have to supply it themselves.
For the long-suffering residents of Dover, ID must seem like the Energiser Bunny of disasters. It keeps going, and going, and ...
We can't help but think that a slow-moving disaster really has struck Dover and the cause is God. Or more accurately, people who hear God's angry voice speaking to them through the random snap and hiss of old eight track tapes, who answer Him aloud in dark, empty rooms, and know, really know what He wants.
Job-like, the poor people of Dover have endured the breathtaking inanity of the previous school board, a bitter election to reclaim that board from the religious fanatics who'd taken it over, and a difficult six-week trial.
With the election of a new moderate board, they might have been forgiven for believing that the trials and tribulations visited on them by the bible beaters was, at long last, over.
They were wrong.
Now, Kent Hovind and Repent America are descending on Dover like a plague of locusts. God may be merciful. We don't know. But the religious right, the creationists, the intelligent design theorists are Old Testament to the core. The secular Sodom must be punished and, if God won't send a tornado, an earthquake, a great fire, something, anything... well, they'll just have to supply it themselves.
For the long-suffering residents of Dover, ID must seem like the Energiser Bunny of disasters. It keeps going, and going, and ...
