"The Evil You Deem Most Terrible..."

So there have been a couple news stories lately about the grand high bastard Archbishop of the Omaha Archdiocese, his Super-Duper Excellency Elden Curtiss. You know, the asshole who moved priests around in Montana and helped at least 30 kids get sexually abused there; the one who transferred at least one pedophile priest and one child pornographer priest around Omaha, then castigated the church employee who called him on it. The one who told the World Herald he sleeps beautifully at night; the one to whom the Catholic church is giving a $300K house in which to retire (hope to see you in the eye of needle, fucker). My brother had the singular pleasure of interviewing Curtiss, and I am glad it was Christopher and not me. My boys need their Daddy whole, strong and not in prison for life.

These news stories have brought me face to face again with events from my youth, and shocked me into recollections of darkness and of evil.

I'm not a believer in a supernatural overlord, but I have no problem raising my children to follow Jesus of Nazareth. I can believe, to a large degree, in the church of Oscar Romero or Desmond Tutu, or Mother Teresa or Maximillian Kolbe. The church of Ratzenberger the Nazi, though, the Vatican's Pit Bull, and of John Paul II, the CIA's pontiff, and of Bernard Law and Bishop Curtiss: This church fundamentally frightens me in a way I haven't felt since I was frozen with night terrors when I was a kid.

I fear. I fear. I fear.

I am afraid of a corporation that holds over 800 million in thrall and has for centuries aided and abetted the felony sexual abuse of children, me included. The boys start Catholic pre-school in about a year, give or take, and I am terrified of the potential harm that may be done to them by an organism that has shown every willingness to let the children suffer until they are caught red-handed. Sure, there are sick fucks everywhere; in every school and every park, but the Catholic church has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the law, blamed the media for its crimes, and thrown a middle finger to victims. It is fact that Elden Fuckhole Curtis transferred a known pedophile priest around Montana for years, resulting in damage to at least 30 kids. I don't want to make this about my experiences, but I know something about the hurt and injury that occurs when a kid has his doors broken down in that manner. I spent over 20 years in spiritual poverty I didn't recognize and that I finally realized, sort of, I did not deserve. I could not love, and it was just part of my identity that no one could possibly love me. It no longer defines me; I am stronger and better now; but you're never entirely free of it.

Thirty children in Montana and more in Omaha had swaths of their lives taken from them. I am not an empathetic person by nature, but I am almost incapacitated by the extremity of the rage and sorrow I feel for them, and for all victims of these fucking men of god and the fat bloated uncaring bastards who enable them. Thousands of children violated, and Ratzenberger has the malice, the cruelty, to blame the media for blowing it out of proportion. Curtiss told my brother he sleeps soundly at night, and the Catholic Organism, the Roman Spider, says fuck you to law and to victims and to Christ and REWARDS the Vatican's Pit Bull by appointing him pope. They say fuck you to the Montana and Omaha victims and REWARD Curtiss with a $300K retirement home.

So yeah, there are sick fucks everywhere, but I am, unbelievably, going to commend my children into the hands of a corporation that considers itself above earthly law or accountability, and that did everything in its power to hide the suffering and injury it inflicted upon its most vulnerable members.

I fear.

I fear that finding out after the fact (which is when you find out, if at all) would mean the damage to my sweet, precious, beautiful little boys would already be done. I don't want them to be condemned to the same miserable dirty cage that I inhabited for so many years. If they find faith or prayer, I want it to be whole and clean and strong. I want them to be overwhelmed by love and mystery, not amputated by knee-jerk cynicism and hate. I fear...

I fear what their father would do if they were harmed by that organism. I don't believe in forgiveness, for me or for anyone else, and should my children be harmed by the Catholic church, I swear upon my body, my life, and my love for my sons, I will not leave a temple stone standing from Rome to Nebraska. I have no love and no loyalty for these pretend followers of goodness: I will tear down their churches and drink their hearts' blood to the bottom.

I fear.

much peace

Relevant Poem by Thomas McGrath

After Tomasito's Departure

The sun still shines
And the moon moves on the waters.
In the heavy press of the heat,
The flowers and the citizens shrivel.
Everything in order for the summer solstice:

But the whole city empty -
Since you've been gone.

(McGrath, 1991)

much peace

Benediction to Max and Will (to be recited at nap and bedtimes)

I love you in the morning, in the afternoon and
at night.

I love you when I go to work, and when I come home.

I love you at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I love you when the sun comes up, and in the dark
under the moon, and all the way to the stars.

(Copyright, 2009, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Some More Lyrics in the Mediocre Tradition of ThomasJ

Worn out old cliche leans on the bar, anti-omniscient and
the narrator struggles to the car
Sits and transcribes faces, trying to capture all the spaces...

the wood and the whiskeyand/the cigarettes and the t.v. and
a drunken angel dancing on the bar

and everything is stories and everything is poems
and nothing really illustrates/nothing really penetrates
and every incidental touch reminds him he is so, so
far away from home

Seven hours and fifteen minutes dying in the circle of
her arms while she breathes softly in her sleep
and dawn is never dark enough to reconcile the raging gulf...

the warmth of the bedclothes/the ice on the windows and
the raucous passers-by down in the street

and everything is stories and everything is poems
and nothing really illustrates/nothing really penetrates
and every incidental touch reminds him he is so, so
far away from home...

I thought I knew who my friends were
now it seems that i just can't remember
and this age I feel is sinking in my bones...

So maybe once tomorrow night, I'll try to sleep without the light

let the shadows on the walls
be just shadows on the walls
and slip from fear to blessed eversleep

To let go all the stories and surrender all the poems...
where there's nothing left to illustrate/no secrets to infiltrate
just all this time and all this time just so, so
far away...

(Copyright 2008 - Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Obama Continues Rendition - Screw Him

Quick post today. I am too angry to try to be witty.

L.A. Times reports that the Obama administration will continue the rendition policies of the former regime. Some apologists bandy semantics and assert that we we will only kidnap folks and send them to countries that don't torture, but that smacks of bullshit to me. If we want to be sure suspects aren't tortured, then bring them here and make the process transparent.

To clarify: I could give a good goddamn about five minutes of waterboarding. We had a ridiculous national argument about that while we were haveing people's teeth broken with hammers in Syria and people raped with broken bottles in old Soviet gulags in Uzbekistan. I voted for Obama with some hope things might be different, but the cynicism I manufactured to shroud my optimism has been borne out. Barack Obama is a bad guy owned by the same interests that W. was. Fuck him and all the other professional dissemblers.

much peace

Go Rush!!!!!

Rush Limbaugh is in the headlines again. He's not smuggling drugs this time, or displaying his phenomenal football illiteracy (I mean Jesus Christ, Donovan McNabb has carried this Eagles team on his back his whole goddamn career). This time he's resuming his role as the premier fat-ass megalomaniac of the GOP, which is good news for the Democrats. When the most visible face in your party is a crazy, sweaty, xenophobic talk show host who does no research and doesn't check his "facts"... well, you get the picture. It's way early of course, but if this trend continues the GOP will buck history and lose more seats in the midterms, and probably nominate Sarah Palin or someone like her in 2012. I am not a supporter of any politician, per se, at least not on the basis of their personal identity, so I am reserving judgment on Obama as pResident until I see his policies in action, but he is an infernally intelligent person, and one of the better speakers I have seen in the last couple of decades. Palin barely survived a gaffe-prone Joe Biden. Can you imagine her opposing Obama directly? It would be like sandblasting a damp graham cracker.

If I were the GOP, I would beg George Will to beat Rush to rhetorical death with the lead pipe in the library. If I were the Dems, I would revel in the fact that Rush is again in the news representing the worst and the dimmest of the opposition.

(Author's note: I apologize to George Will for mentioning him in the same sentence with Rush. I know, Mr. Will, that Rush couldn't carry your jock strap.)

much peace

" ... And we did want to be respectful of the neighbors of the Obama family, of all the many people who are feeling great congratulatory happiness. But I think that we have to recognize where—well, that President Obama has now become the chief arms exporter in the world. He’s in charge of the most massive killing machine in the world. ... "
(Kathy Kelly, international peace activist, as told to Amy Goodman on DemoocracyNow!)


Are my sons safer now that Israel has demolished Gaza with U.S. money and technology? Are we safer with 600,000 - 1 million Iraqis dead? I doubt it. After 9/11, this country reserved the right to remember and hate without stint or discretion. What about the Iraqi shopkeeper who saw his son blown in half by good old American know-how, or the 8-year-old who saw his parents murdered in an elective war? Don't the friends and relatives of the dead and maimed in Iraq and Gaza have the same perpetual right to rage and hatred that I would if my toddlers were murdered by another country's bombs, or is the horrible choking, desperate grief of middle-eastern non-christians and non-Jews somehow less real, their bereavement less keen, because American exceptionalism has designated their sacrifice acceptable?

Let's for a moment pretend that these actions have made us safer, rather than simply hardening another generation of anti-American sentiment. I still can't look another father in the eye and say, "your child shall be killed, blown apart, so that mine can maintain the lifestyle to which he is accustomed," or to another son, "Your father will be burned to death with white phosphorous so that my old man can retire without stress." The price is too great.

Self-congratulatory, preening fucks like W.F. Buckley will prate about the existential threat; neocons think it's our divine right to conquer the world. The world bank, the military-industrial complex, and all their economic hit men think only of profit. I just can't get that orphaned father out of my head. I know how I would feel if my boys were taken from me. There is no amount of bloodshed that would sate me, no salve would tame the violence. Our American attitude, though, doesn't recognize our murders as real people or real deaths, just acceptable statistics in pursuit of our "interests." I don't know, maybe we've killed enough people to make us more secure for a little while. I don't think attrition is a long-term fix, though, unless we're willing to implement a Final Solution and simply kill everybody whose interests run contrary to ours. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before those we've brutalized gather enough strength and numbers to attack us again. Hopefully I can manage the casualties in my family.

much peace,