Primate Republican activist Rusty DePass thinks monkey-based racism is funny; but seriously— can you blame him? Some unfortunate creatures are just more animal than human, you know?
A doctrinal fetish will lead mortal man to betray himself into the clutches of bigotry, fanaticism, superstition, intolerance, and the most atrocious of barbarous cruelties.
—The Urantia Book
It’s National Monkey Week, a few special days each year when we take our Homo sapiens ego a little less seriously by contemplating our humble hairy origins as Primates. But many supposed Homo Sapiens won’t be celebrating with us this week, like Rusty DePass, and Sherri Goforth. These two examples of creation-by-fiat and fall-by-forbidden-fruit are too busy exposing their racist ideology on the national stage.
Racists like DePass and Goforth may or may not truly understand the nature and origin of their racism. But a poignant reminder of its intransigence was inadvertently expressed by Sherri Goforth: “I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.” Yeah, we know why you wish you hadn’t sent it to people who find you morally and ethically repugnant; you know, similar to the way Michelle Malkin feels outrage about “perv” David Letterman.
The email poster Sherri Goforth was emailing to a select list when one of a series of tubes malfunctioned and directed the email to someone with liberal sensibilities, who immediately recognized how outraged Sarah Palin would be when she has a few moments off from the sexist Letterman joke scandal, and could direct some of her moral outrage at Republican racism. (Still waiting for her come-to-Jesus moment on seriously saying Obama was a domestic terrorist? Me too.)
No, Sherri Goforth probably can’t “change” her racist point of view; she either isn’t able to fathom the intellectual and religious underpinnings of it in the first place, or is simply unwilling to do so, even now that she is a national public focal point of racism at its most puerile. The affliction of the ignorant will always be that they are ignorant of their ignorance.
It’s a no-brainer to say Depass, Goforth and many others like them do not believe in evolution, but rather in the Biblical account of creation, which asserts Adam and Eve were the first two human beings, completely innocent and inexperienced mortal creatures with only a single childishly arbitrary rule to follow. Even if they had not failed God’s little test, some descendant of theirs inevitably would have. (I like to think it was a crazed vegetarian Mesopotamian fruit lover who thought having a “knowledge of good and evil” was absolutely indispensable to any kind of meaningful existence, i.e., one that could recognize that God was himself, “good.”) By believing this ridiculous story they can justify to themselves that it’s just good clean American family values to make fun of the idea of evolution through the primate species, and thus the color and race of the president, and his wife. Yes, to them, the very idea of God turning little hairy monkeys into men and women of a variety of colors is, well, just silly.
On the other hand, it could be argued that the wide-spread retardation of scientific understanding in the 21st century after Christ, (who strongly suggested we learn to “love one another,”) is one of the increasingly tragic results of the modern versions of fetishistic belief of Biblical inerrancy and infallibility.
Alas, the inclusion of a largely mythological creation story in Biblical literature still continues to obscure the truth of our evolutionary heritage, and our remarkable Primate ancestors. Even though such blind obeisance to ancient and erroneous religious doctrine is nothing more or less than the abdication of intellectual integrity, many professed Christians will not hesitate to sacrifice their integrity to blindly follow their particular fetishistic doctrine.
But it is a particularly virulent strain of stupid which ensures the modern monkey mind of thousands upon thousands of creatures will continue to refuse to recognize the truth of our evolutionary past, no matter how obvious and ridiculous it is to do so before the growing onslaught of scientific discovery and cosmological clarity. And they will continue to do so, even though it is a glaring philosophic assault upon both the unity and the free-willness of God— who has seen fit to routinely change a caterpillar into a butterfly— by presuming him incapable of using his own amazing techniques of evolution to change a hominid into a honky self-aware human being.
This scientific, philosophical, and theological clusterphuque requires some serious unpacking; far too much to include here. But any human being who can actually pull together twenty or so minutes of reflective thought must begin to recognize that our cosmological understanding as self-conscious creatures has critical gaps that are demanding genuine answers, which are essential to ending racism and bigotry in this country, and the world.
Moral self-consciousness is true human self-realization; it constitutes the foundation of the human soul, the only attribute of being human which distinguishes us from our animal origin. Until professed Christians recognize the essentially fictitious nature of key portions of their inflexible Biblical cosmology, they will continue to justify bigotry, fanaticism, superstitions, intolerance, and the most atrocious of barbarous cruelties— the torture of other human beings.
Right you are, my hairy Doctor; apes aren’t monkeys; the chimp is merely a symbolic representative of the modern types of monkey, baboon, chimpanzee, and gorilla, which all sprang from the same pair of twins from the mid-mammal tribe which, coincidentally, also produced another, and superior pair of twins which were the progenitors of the human race. (Thus, although modern man and the simians did spring from the same tribe and species, they did not spring from the same parents. Man’s ancestors are descended from the superior strains of the selected remnant of that mid-mammal tribe, whereas simians (excepting certain pre-existent types of lemurs, gibbons, apes, and other monkey-like creatures) are the descendants of the most inferior couple of this mid-mammal group.)
Rusty DePass and his ilk are human descendants, but have backslidden into monkey-dumb through ignorant personal choice.
Apes aren’t monkeys. Monkeys have tails, and yet you choose to illustrate your monkey post with chimpanzees!
I like your picture of Rusty DePass, by the way. I think you got the ears just right. ;o)