Break The Terror: Genius Eleven: Religious Extremism Edition

02 January 2010

Genius Eleven: Religious Extremism Edition

I'm having a 10,000 Maniacs kind of day, and I came across this song I had sort of forgotten about -- it's weird how that happens, right, even when you've had a record for fifteen years. So I'm listening to this song "Jubilee," which I think is very relevant. In the song, Natalie Merchant tells the story, in the way only a good songwriter can do, of a simple man who becomes a religious terrorist, the fires of his anger stoked by the sight of a black girl and a white boy "kissing shamelessly." In monitoring the anti-gay movement at Truth Wins Out, and in seeing the rhetoric against black people, against the poor, against the President, etc., coming out of Greater Teabagger-dom, it's evident that the easily-led right-wing fringe is teetering ever closer to outright extremism. Religious terrorism is on the rise (not just the Muslim kind, thank you), racist hatred is boiling...it's a precarious place to be as we enter a new decade (the "Onesies") in this secular, democratic nation.

Right now, an innocent child has been kidnapped by one of her mothers, because the kidnapping mother is now a radicalized fundamentalist Christian, and she refuses to obey court orders which would allow the child to be raised by both of her mothers. It's sick. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go here.

It's all the same story...substitute sexual orientation for race or nationality...it's like a Mad Lib for bigotry.

So we start with "Jubilee." Genius Eleven and more videos below.