Seriously, just what the hell is wrong with conservative Christian Republicans? Why are they so hostile and angry and mean-spirited?

It’s not because they’re conservative; I know people who are politically conservative, but who are also rational and thoughtful. It’s not because they’re Christian; I know a lot of Christians who are caring and loving and compassionate. And it’s not because they’re Republicans; I know many Republicans who understand that governing a nation as complex and diverse as the United States requires a certain amount of compromise.

But it seems when you combine conservatism, Christianity, and Republican ideology, some sort of toxic reaction occurs. It’s like Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk — if the Hulk was capable of hypocrisy.

Stephen Fincher – conservative Christian Republican

This is Stephen Fincher, a conservative Christian Republican from Tennessee. In a speech arguing against providing the poor with food assistance, he recently recited the following from 2 Thessalonians:

He who does not work, neither shall he eat.

When Fincher refers to ‘He who does not work’ he’s talking about the poor. He’s apparently under the impression that if the poor are necessarily lazy. If they had more incentive to work — say, starvation, for example — then Fincher apparently feels they’d get off their indolent asses and get a job. If he’d taken the time to study the situation — if he’d done his own fucking job — Fincher might have understood that most of the people in the U.S. who receive food assistance do work. But because so many of those jobs are low-wage jobs (thanks to members of Congress like Fincher who fight against raising the minimum wage), and because so many of those low-wage jobs don’t include health care (thanks to members of Congress like Fincher who oppose universal health care), and because so many of those workers are single mothers who need affordable day care in order to work those low-wage jobs (and thanks to members of Congress like Fincher, affordable day care isn’t so affordable any more), because of all that, food assistance is necessary for a lot of people.

Vladimir Ilych Lenin – not a conservative Christian Republican

Fincher, by the way, isn’t the only politician to have used 2 Thessalonians to support his political ideology. So did Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. During the Russian famine of 1918 Lenin also recited that same Biblical verse. Lenin, however, was referring to the capitalists and the wealthy who live off of the labor of others. He argued that the early stages of a communist revolution required ‘He who does not work’ to shed his expensive suit and tie and pick up a shovel, and labor alongside the workers who made him rich.

To be fair to Stephen Fincher, he isn’t entirely against government assistance. He owns a farm (on which, by the way, other people do the work while he’s in DC doing the heavy lifting for Congress). Last year Fincher received more than US$70,000 in direct government subsidies. This is money given directly and automatically to farm owners, regardless of need, even if the farm isn’t producing crops that year. The subsidies go predominantly to the largest and most profitable farm operations, rather than to small family farms. Since 1999, Fincher has received about $3.5 million dollars in direct government subsidies.

Conservative Christian Republican

Let me put that in perspective. The $70,500 that conservative Christian Republican Stephen Fincher received in 2012 is nearly double the median income of Tennessee households. The average annual food assistance grant to poor Tennesseans is just under $1,600. The government gave Fincher about 43 times that much money just for owning a fucking farm. And yet he feels $1,600 is too generous for the working poor.

Tell me, what’s conservative about that? What’s Christian about that? What’s Republican about that? I’d really like an answer to that question.

We’ve given up. Surrendered. Oh, we make a big fuss about the mass murder in Aurora. The news is full of ‘human interest’ stories about the victims — this one saved that one’s life, that one just got married, this other one worked with disabled kids, and that one had a promising career. So very sad, so very tragic — and yet we don’t really care enough about these poor people to even have a serious discussion about gun control. The simple fact is, we’ve capitulated. To this guy.

James Holmes

We say we need to have a discussion about gun control, but we openly concede we won’t. Why? Because at this point in the history of our culture we just acknowledge the fact that mass murder is acceptable. We’re basically okay with the fact that every so often somebody will buy a butt-load of firearms, then armor up and walk into a place of business, a shopping mall, a fast food restaurant, a school and shoot the living shit out of as many people as possible. We’re not only okay with it, we’ll pass laws that make it more possible. Hell, we’ll even pass laws that allow folks to buy extra capacity magazines so we can keep the body count up.

Here’s a true thing: according to data published by the FBI, single-victim gun killings have dropped more than 40 percent in the last 30 years. Here’s another true thing: mass murder — the killing of four or more victims in a single related incident — has increased in that same period. In the last three decades there have been around a thousand mass murders, with close to 5000 deaths. That’s another four or five people killed in another mass murder every what, nine days? Those are just the fatalities; who knows how many are wounded? Who know how many end up permanently disabled or emotionally fucked up.

Still, it’s no big deal. We have something over 300 million people in the U.S. We can lose a couple hundred a year to mass murder and not even blink.

Could we do something about it? Sure. If we wanted to. But we don’t. Instead, we’ll continue to make it possible for kids to dye their hair red and dress up in ballistic armor and do their part to provide the media with all those great human interest stories.

There’s a great deal to dislike about the American Midwest in general and Iowa in specific. But I have to admit I love Iowa’s dedication to bicycling. The city, the county and the state are all investing money in building, maintaining, and expanding a statewide network of interlinked bike trails. There’s nearly 2000 miles of bike trails in Iowa–some are paved, some are dirt, some are crushed limestone–and many of them connect with each other in some way.

So I was only mildly surprised yesterday morning. I set out to do a quick three or four mile ride–just enough to stretch out the aging muscles and clear my mind for the day. I had a lecture to write, after all, and homework to do, and chores to perform. So…a quick morning ride. Twenty minutes, tops.

I took a slightly different path than my usual ride–a trail I hadn’t ridden since last year. This particular trail leads through a suburban area with condos beside a small man-made lake around which young mothers push babies in strollers, or young women jog or walk their tiny dogs, or old folks in loopy hats engage in their daily constitutional.

I don’t mind riding slowly and dodging the women and their strollers and their dogs, but I rarely ride this trail because it also passes through a couple of strip malls–and is there anything less visually interesting than a strip mall?

Once you get through the malls, though, the trail splits. The longer part travels through open rolling fields; the shorter part, through a wooded area. Because I’d already done a couple of miles, I planned to just circle the lake and head back. So instead of a three or four mile ride, it would be a five or six mile ride–hardly any difference at all, right?

And if I’m going to do five or six miles, I may as well cruise through the short wooded area, because that’s just another mile or so. Not even worth mentioning, really. However, where the bike trail ended last year, I saw this:

The trail had been expanded. And it was awfully inviting. But I had a lecture to write and homework to do and fuck all that–who am I to refuse such an invitation?

So I kept riding. The trail eventually ended at a point where a couple of old disused railroad bridges crossed the creek (the bike trail generally follows the creek path). A passenger aircraft was passing overhead, so I waved just in case one of the passengers happened to be looking down and wondering if anybody was on the bike path.

So, end of the trail. Time to turn around and head back to that lecture and those household chores and fuck all that. I mean, look–there’s a creek and bridges and what sort of person wouldn’t want to walk around a bit and see what there is to see? It’s almost a duty. I’m not one to shirk my duty (and honest, I’d get the lecture written at some point).

Through close observation I was able to determine that somebody named Candi rules. I deduced that the area was likely used by young folks to engage in mind-altering experiments. I further discerned hints that these things were a source of regional vanity.

Among my discoveries, I encountered an astonishing variety of plants with thorns, and a species of small but violently insane insect that is attracted to bloody scratches caused by exposing bare legs to thorny plants. Swarms of the little bastards dogged me, and the quicker I moved to escape them the more thorny plants I encountered, creating still more bloody scratches, which drove the insects into an absolute frenzy.

I would have explored more, but I had a lecture to write, don’t you know, and chores to perform. Granted, it took slightly longer than expected to get back to the lecture, on account of as I was circling the condo-encircled lake I had to slow down for a couple of old ladies who were discussing the barn swallows that were hawking for insects beneath a nearby bridge.

I am as fond of a swallow as the next person, and I was in the mood to see insects eaten. So I made a slight detour.

You can’t tell from the photograph, but there were roughly a gazillion hungry barn and cliff swallows, all darting and circling and doing spectacular things in the air. A gazillion, and all of them busily eating what I like to believe were the same sort of miniscule sadistic villains that sucked a full pint of blood from my thorn-gashed legs.

After watching them inflict mass casualties on the insect population, I mounted my bike and continued lectureward, a happy and contented and mildly bloodied man.

When it’s completed, that trail will be about 35 miles in length. When it’s linked to the next trail system, it will total about 110 miles–and that’s before it links to the other 2000 miles of Iowa bike trails.

When that happens, it seems likely I’ll never finish another lecture.