Caen Spree: Haters of Islam, Mockers of Christ

Because I do all this work tucked away in a tiny, dank room — the Missus gets the airy light-filled top-floor studio, which is fine because #1 she paints and #2 as a longtime New Yorker I, like a rat, neither need nor want much air or light — I feel a little ridiculous trying to gin up your enthusiasm for Caen Spree. I’ve kind of gotten over it with Fun Friday because I know that’s a success — lots of you contribute to those and the sum always winds up way bigger than the parts, hurrah! But Caen Spree is a different story. You know, and I’ve as much as admitted, that I do these when I just don’t have the focus for a single-topic essay. And that might be mood or it might be fatigue or it might just be, as it’s been saying in my brain scan notes since 2022, “mild cerebral atrophy.” (Actually I had to go look that up, which just goes to show; also I can’t remember whether the most recent report said “mild.”) So in a way, when I celebrate the legacy of the legendary San Francisco ellipsist, I’m pleading infirmity; also I’m giving you a miscellany sort of like what alicublog readers get for free, albeit only once a week (pennywise and pound-fools that they are). I hope you don’t feel cheated. Look at it this way, though: There’s that much more of a chance that you’ll find something here to relate to...

Like all good citizens I am pleased that Al-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic Senate primary (and other progressives and/or socialists won around the country as well). Unlike some of my friends I was not surprised by the narrowness of his victory; while he was clearly the superior candidate, he’d been hit with a barrage of racist crap, some of it (albeit a milder variety) from his opponent Haley Stevens (who nonetheless conceded quite graciously after her defeat, bless her). So I expected a late Stevens rally, though not for her to get so close. I don’t take it as too bad a sign — it’s fine that we have to keep pushing back, because every rotten fortification we knock down in doing so is further evidence and encouragement that the final victory is inevitable, and maybe sooner than many of us dreamed even a few years ago...

Now the right are already discharging their bullshit blunderbusses at Al-Sayed; Fox News is fast out of the gate with “El-Sayed campaign backed by over $100,000 from dozens of members of group with alleged terror ties” — they’re talking about CAIR, whose terrorist designation by the satrapies of Texas and Florida may be taken in the same spirit as a fatwa from a bunch of muftis. Their derangement is to me encouraging — like the opera buffa sputtering of wounded AIPAC enthusiasts such as Commentary’s Abe Greenwald (no link, but I swear he really said this:)

It’s the country’s 250th birthday, and we’re approaching the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And yet the U.S., at home and abroad, is buckling under assault from radical Islam.

El-Sayed’s nomination notches another victory for the ascendant socialist-Islamist political movement trying to remake the republic. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani established the template and has lifted up assorted DSA congressional nominees in his wake. Among others around the country, there’s New Jersey’s Democratic congressional nominee Adam Hamawy, whose work history includes a stint with an al-Qaeda front group...

Etcetera ad nauseum. The good news is that you and me and all the other wiseguys are no longer the only voters who, instead of half-listening and nodding half-heartedly at this standard-issue AIPAC glurge, now look at it and think what the fuck is this guy’s problem.¡Venceremos! Don’t worry, Abe, that’s not Farsi...

Oh, and if Mike Rogers thinks this is going to win it for him, Al-Sayed is gonna do much better in the general...

As someone who was raised Roman Catholic, I have to say the way evangelical Christians have proven themselves shitty avatars of the Prince of Peace is kinda piquant. The Mother Church has a terrible record over the centuries, God knows, but Francis was and Leo XIV is turning the ship around, while the not-so-Greatly-Awakened megachurch fascists are showing their whole ass. Religion News Service relates the tale of rightwing Congressional candidate Joe Mitchell speaking to a “crowd of conservative evangelical pastors” about his Democratic opponent, state representative Rev. Lindsay James, who he says merely “calls herself a pastor” (she is properly ordained in the Presbyterian Church), and then widens the scope of his tarbrush to take in other non-wingnut pastors on ballots like James Talarico in Texas:

“I call them PINOS,” he said, explaining the term is an acronym for “Pastors in Name Only.”

“Because they’re not real pastors, right? They don’t profess the true gospel of Jesus Christ,” added Mitchell, who has attended an evangelical church in the past.

I know ours is a great country in which citizens choose to follow (or can’t find a way out of) many different walks of life, but it seems to me that people who profess themselves followers of Christ yet not only approve but celebrate the foul-mouthed rapist thug in the White House and his open graft, hatred of and viciousness toward the downtrodden, and devotion to prevarication that would make the Father of Lies himself worry for his crown, are following an unsustainable path. I feel this way for a few reasons, but mainly because though my own faith is lapsed I feel that God, however one conceives of it, is not mocked. I mean, these guys have been full of shit a while, but in my experience they used to at least gesture toward a vision that Christians of all sorts around the world could understand and share. But this cracker asshole telling a bunch of other cracker assholes that the people who want all their brothers and sisters to have a decent life and protection from want and illness are on that account heretics and frauds... well, all I can do is join the Mississippi Sheiks up top: He calls that religion but I know he’s going to hell when he dies.

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