A Year Since Undergrad Part 2, Conservatism

Firstly, I'm feeling better about being out of school now; I really needed to rant. There are some noticeable benefits of being out of school:

- NO HOMEWORK!!! No reading assignments, no papers, no assessments, no poopy group work!
- I didn't want to believe it but, once I got my narrative transcript, there's no denying the homophobia of at least two art therapy instructors. I know another semi-out art therapy major who was adored by these same instructors, but she was inactive rather than militant and never made anyone squirm through gender-neutral pronouns (yes. This happened.).
- The art therapy internship programs altogether. I know you guys had mostly great experiences and I'm glad for you...but mine went from bad to terrible very quickly. "Jeanne Zilske" - need I say more?
- LESS BULLSHIT!! I have to bullshit customers, but that never lasts more than ten minutes.
- Less drama. It's ALVERNO
- Alverno's in denial of how it's a lesbian school. Either you're queer (Lauren, you're an honorary lesbian) or you're pregnant there, but everyone is in denial that that's how it is. Don't have to put up with that anymore!
- CHICAGO!!!
- The majority of my weekends were spent traveling...the majority of my time in school was defined by long-distance relationships. NO MORE!!!


Secondly:

At work, we're getting more and more conservative books. The tea-baggers are getting louder - greater in numbers and power perhaps. In one of our most popular stores at the airport, I counted a dozen books:
1) "Voices of the True Woman Movement" by Nancy Leigh DeMoss
2) "Radical" by David Platt
3) "To Save America" by Newt Gingrich (TAKE A HISTORY LESSON, YOU DUMBNUT!!)
4) "Conservative Victory" by Sean Hannity
5) "2010 Take Back America" by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann (AMERICA HAS BEEN SECULAR WITH SOCIALIST LEANINGS FOR A LONG TIME, IDIOTS!!)
6) Glenn Beck...vomit
7) Ann Coulter...double vomit
8) "Losing Our Religion" by S.E. Cupp
9) "Defining Conservatism" by Jonathan Krohn
10) "Liberty and Tyranny" by Mark R. Levin
11) "Obama Zombies" by Jason Mattera
12) "Catastrohpe" by our stupid friends Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

To summarize all these books: True Christians have to choose between Jesus and the corrupt American ways because Americans, lead by Obama, are waging a crusade against True Christians. Up until Obama, secularism, science and socialism* didn't exist in America, just Christianity. Some of these authors even cry that Obama is COERCING WORKERS INTO UNIONS!! GOD HELP US!! Anyway, the majority of these books were written and published after Obama was elected and some of them are selling very well. I'm worried that the tea-baggers will succeed with whatever fart-hole they present at the primaries. It's not that far away!! Obama hasn't lived up to his promises to the LGBTQ community and, if tea-baggers do regain power in '12, we're doomed.



*Public schools, public libraries, free clinics, food pantries, collectives, co-ops, Red/Yellow Bike programs, etc. are all fruits of socialism.

Since when is personal spirituality a bad thing?

I'm very fortunate to have friends and family who have strong, personal spirituality; we've all come from very different backgrounds - Catholic, Jewish, atheist, Buddhist, Neo-Pagan - and come to similar places. There is the fable of the blind monks examining an elephant, each one claiming to have discovered a tree, a hose, a fan, a rock, etc. We're all monks, but have admitted that we are blind and that our interpretations cover only a portion of what there is - indeed, only a portion is really what humans can hope to achieve.

After graduating in May, the only fundamentalist, evangelical, super-conservative religious folk I saw/heard were the ones online and easily shut off. Their utter rejection of science, compassion, acceptance, and secular society disgusts me. Instead I bit my tongue as some atheists wrote/said that people who believe in God/whatever might as well believe in the Tooth Fairy. After all, these people understand that science is necessary and that theocracies are A BAD IDEA so what does it matter that my timid spiritual statements get brushed aside?

And now I have coworkers who believe that, without ever having read it, the Bible is 100% factual. These fundamentalists have as much influence over me as the evangelizing atheists: however much I allow them to influence me. Because we live in a very diverse, secular society, nobody will ever get all that we spiritually want but we will get what we need: the ability to practice in private. Which is as it should be: PRIVATE.

I't just so strange to me that the two extremes who hate each other so much would act so similarly towards someone in the middle...but I'd still take science and secular living over theocratic insanity.