chou chope

Modern Day Moses

Let my people go!

I guess you could call it Exodus anxiety. Sometimes I'm a little freaked about how dire everything seems to be getting. The stuff I see in my office, people. I'm sure your environments are the same. Exposure is a bitch these days, no?

I am getting old. I can prove it. Like my irritating, pharma-mental papa before me, I'm starting to think stuff is really coming unhinged. End times.

I can remember being bored to tears in church as a child. At the time, even Hell was decorated like the Brady Bunch for me. I remember hearing tales of tribulations and revelations and thinking what fantastical hocus pocus it all seemed to be.

Three decades went by and folks are now blowing themselves up literally left and right. 9/11, the most horrifying day, has come, gone, and is almost forgotten already by many. Everyone who declares our troops must come home right away (Obama) has forgotten the feeling of being attacked and being defenseless.

In case you are reading this somehow and are in that camp, let me clarify my position: FREEDOM THROUGH MILITARY VICTORY. That's it, and to me it means that everything you have, you have because soldiers fought and died.

If the media whores hunt down the source of their freedoms, don't they find this? War. Ugly, devastating war? Wars that made us question everything? Everytime? That's what I read, way back when I read about history. When people start spouting defeatist and anti-military drivel, my stomach starts churning out acidic hot squirts. Yes, soldiers died to provide them the mind numbing comfort of their ignorance, and that is sad.

Ignorance can be such an ugly weapon too. Don't you hate being the root of your own problems? Like when you figure out you just fucked up? It sucks, doesn't it? You can't fix what you can't face. Say it with me. You can't fix what you can't face.

So I started thinking about the future, because that's what I do. Eventually, I found myself drooling cross-eyed about end times, wondering what I don't know that might possibly kill me. And I started thinking that if God wanted to speak to us, lead us out of our Egypt, would he use the same techniques he used on his people in history? The thought boggled my mind for some time.

What if there was a modern day Moses? Would you listen? What if God sent ten plagues our way to wake us up? Ten horrifying, out there, nonduplicatable and unmistakable signs.

And of course, that got me FINALLY to the point of my post, exodus anxiety. You simply can't wonder if God will bring ten plagues for very long before you consider that he may be doing just that. How do these sound for modern day plagues?

10) Impotence-evidenced by the barrage of viagra, cialis, et al.

9) AIDS-if you can get it up, it might kill you

8) Islamofascism-anti-freedom, anti-choice, anti-semite, anti-everything and no deodorant.

7) Poverty as a virtue- Just how are people supposed to be motivated by living totally off the government or by supporting the worthless within the system? All of history comes down to these three: fuck the poor.

6) White trash as role models-soar with the eagles or flock with the turkeys. In one week, we denigrate a space-flying, diaper wearing, love torn astronaut, and sadly bemoan the great loss of a drug addled, illiterate porn star. Great sadness indeed.

5) Democrap-the recent but totally baffling denial of reality, as in, "the economy is terrible" or "losing the illegal war" (this is a whole post in itself, much later)

4) Evil oil-America's greatest lesson in biting the hand that feeds you. I love what this article said:

During 2005, the Tax Foundation’s Jonathan Williams and Scott Hodge found, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron (NYSE: CVX), and ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) “paid a combined corporate income tax burden of $44.3 billion on their reported gross earnings. Compared to last year’s combined corporate income taxes of $29.7 billion, their burden for 2005 has increased by 49.2 percent and follows the overall trend of escalating corporate tax collections in the United States.”
Williams and Hodge added in their January 31 “Fiscal Fact” that “the average effective tax rate on the major integrated oil and gas industry is estimated to equal 38.3 percent. This exceeds the estimated average effective tax rate of 32.3 percent for the market as a whole.” Yep, it'll be great when they don't make money, huh?

3) Reality television-A clearer documentation of the downfall of civilization will never eclipse the power of the primetime docudrama.

2) Regulation-The government intervention and overregulation is going to choke out the economy long before johnny joe job gets laid off. We are becoming so stifled by lawyers and litigation, my company is currently looking into plans to have a legal advisor surgically attached to each of our sales people. It's cumbersome to the p&l though, and could cost me a fully functioning colon, so sacrifice, again, will no doubt be the name of the game.

1) Class Warfare- Hey, you already got your own post! And I joke, I do, but a plague of people just seems to make a nice numero uno. The classic population explosion argument. Don't turn your snide noses up at the Iraqi people, uh uh huh. We aren't so terribly far from our own class warfare turning into a civil war.

No doubt, some of you wouldn't view these as modern day plagues. Still, look around you. What would be your number one? You could leave it in the comments, or feel free to take this to your site and meme it. No meme really makes you feel as good as my homemade modern plague meme will make you feel. Believe that.

Peace out

Posted by shoe at February 13, 2007 10:39 PM | TrackBack