Folks, we’ve got hyperbole. We’ve had an outbreak of hysteria. We’re about to be taken by the hype and holler of the Right — and we will use capital letters in an attempt to preview the excitement coming to voters in this, the waning months of the 2012 Presidential campaign.
By now you’ve no doubt heard of the GRIPPING AND TRUE story of the (Black man) Obama White House’s EXTENSIVE AND DEVASTATING NEWS LEAKS . . . well, to pretty much everyone who’ll listen, it seems . . . regarding the TOP-SECRET RAID last year that killed Osama bin Laden. It’s the 20-minute DOCUMENTARY titled “Dishonorable Disclosures” THAT’S SHAKING THE WORLD TO ITS CORE as it reveals how the CONNIVING BASTARDS surrounding the Chief Conniving Bastard/Usurper have RECKLESSLY SPEWED INTELLIGENCE LEAKS that have put, and continue to put, the lives of our BRAVE SOLDIERS in TREMENDOUS PERIL in the aftermath of the RAID THAT KILLED BIN LADEN.
Pass the popcorn and nail down the Constitution — this thing’s gonna be a smash.
And it’s no doubt utterly fascinating, what with the plaintive pleas of former Navy SEALS and the anguished looks on the faces of good, middle-class (white) Americans who beseech God, or Congress, or someone, to stop the madness of the leak-driven, security-reckless Obama White House. I haven’t seen it — alas, I’m not a Republican donor — but it sounds like a corker, full of serious, specific charges that the anti-colonialist Kenyan President and his staff have spent the almost year-and-a-half after the killing of Bin Laden doing little more than bursting pipelines of secrecy and emptying wellsprings of intelligence for pure political ambition laced with a deep-seated contempt for America, Americans, and the American soldiers who defend their freedoms. It’ll have even greater impact on the base — by which I mean the culturally and morally base, as well as the foundational demographic of GOP support — than the Swift Boat attacks two presidential elections ago against Sen. John Kerry, whose brave service in Vietnam was portrayed as a masturbatory exercise in grandstanding climaxing in gross cowardice and dereliction of duty.
But virtually nothing in the GOP-funded Swift Boat line of attacks turned out to be true, although it did hand the election over to a man against whom charges of going AWOL have been levied, George W. Bush. And, according to a point-by-point analysis by CNN, virtually nothing in “Disclosures” is, either.
Check it out athttp://www.cnn.com/2012/08/17/opinion/bergen-obama-swift-boat/index.html?iref=allsearch. The author is an expert on the hunt for and killing of bin Laden, and while there are some who scream that CNN is just a front for the liberals — I mean, Anderson Cooper’s gay, so there you go — I think it’s more than safe to say that by any objective standard, the “documentary” is nothing more than a slickly produced example of a deliberate violation of the commandment not to bear false witness against one’s neighbor. It’s true that the Obama-hating GOP has devoted itself over the last four years to making sure we all know that Obama isn’t in any way our “neighbor” — or anyone else deserving of decent, honest treatment — and it would be hard not to conclude that the Christians who energize and enable the Right hold to a less-than-neighborly view of their President. And, Biblical literalists that they are, it’s possible to assume that they feel free to lie about him because the Decalogue refers only to lying against neighbors and — whew! — he isn’t. “One of us,” a neighbor, that is.
And it’s not like they’re in court or anything . . . right? Isn’t there a context somewhere?
Yes, but not the “testifying-in-court” one they’d like to cling to. There’s a larger, more profound and expansive context wherein believers in the Almighty not only refuse to lie about other people, but also speak out against those who do. That doesn’t permit them to parse through the wording of the Eighth Commandment to find opportunities where it might be OK to toss out a few widely- and wildly-disseminated lies and false accusations against someone. Even someone they hate — in violation also of the LORD’s command.
But in a Church tucked tightly in bed with a political party that’s influenced it more than the Church has influenced the Party, these things happen. And if they happen more regularly every four years during a Presidential election, and if they need to be ramped up because the guy who won the last race is particularly . . . well, particularly “not like us” in ways that the GOP and the Religious Right have been thrilled to exploite . . . then it’s necessary to spin the Commandment a little. You know — the greater good and all.
Whoring will do that.
But these whoring members of the Church, as conservatives, hold to an unwaveringly high view of Scripture, as they often remind us. If we “take the Bible at face value,” we take it to mean that it’s a sin to knowingly testify falsely — to lie — about anyone. Period. The makers of the documentary know their claims are wrong; they know their low opinion of Obama isn’t a “fact,” and they know what it is they’re trying to accomplish — and likely will. Tragically and terrifyingly for them, however, the LORD who gave us the Commandments isn’t fooled. The creators of “Dishonorable Disclosures” risk tremendous dishonor when all that’s hidden will be disclosed (Mark 4:22). Only their repentance can save them from the judgment of the Righteous One. I pray it comes, and comes quickly.