Fast Track For A Sacred Cow

Agnes is part of a larger problem, though a prominent fang in the snake.

We were all treated this week, among the detritus of political campaign and megaphonic hairpieces, to the news that Pope Francis had officially recognized a second intercessory miracle attributed to the ghoulish figure of Mother Theresa. It startled me, as I had forced my knowledge of this dreary procession into the fog only to have it snapped back forefront by the fawning and wholly supportive litany of our news outlets.

Mother Theresa, whom I shall now be properly referring to as Agnes, is known to us as a benign and beatific figure. She has “Mother” in her self-granted title, affecting an elevated and benevolent position, and her relentless PR machine has done nothing for the last fifty years but embellish that persona while trying to keep her cruelty and hypocrisy a secret from us.

She has also been on the fast track to sainthood essentially since the moment of her death. The organization which bears her name, the Missionaries of Charity, continues to take in obscene amounts of cash from around the world while operating little more than death hotels. Claiming over four thousand nuns and nineteen of these horror show hospices in Calcutta alone, the last benevolent thing the sisters have done was to shut down adoption centers in India due to overwhelming religious intolerance. The intolerance, of course, originating with the sisters and directed at India's adoption laws, which do not exclude un- or formerly-married individuals.

Between then and now, the doddering form of Pope John Paul II claimed as authentic the story related by a woman healed of her cancer by intercession from Agnes's picture. The woman's doctors and husband told a very different story, but what need have we of doctors when glowing snapshots are among us? It comes as no surprise to read that the benevolent Missionaries of Charity are accused of illegally retaining the woman's medical records which document her year-long course of professional treatment, as well as pressuring the hospital staff to endorse this nonsense about miracles. The miracle that has just been recognized by the current Pope dates to 2008, and involved the same kind of nonsense around a Brazilian man's brain tumors. I unfortunately haven't been able to find any substantive article regarding actual details, but the Vatican Insider described it as “scientifically impossible.” The same Vatican, I remind you, that has never accepted or understood anything scientific until it was force fed to them. These things are on record, you can read as much about them as you can stomach. I describe them only to sketch out for you exactly what it is this dead woman is being credited with, and that these insulting and obviously delusional lies are what puts Agnes at the right hand of the creator she didn't believe in.

Agnes's personal documents reflected that she had no faith in the existence of God. The man responsible for examining those documents as part of the first step in canonization, Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, argues she was only having a half-decade “dark night of the soul” and that the cynical analysis of people like myself fails to properly understand her intent. But what other explanation could come from a representative of the nation-state responsible for both promoting and profiting from the never-ending victory lap Agnes seemed to be on? Incidentally, it's remarkable to me that the Vatican would not only allow her non-belief to become public, but that the clear contradiction between being a non-believer and a candidate for canonization seems to mean nothing.

Before the fourth century, the only saints were martyrs. If you wanted a seat in the VIP box, you had to die for your faith, preferably in a very public and painful way. Regional religious heroes, now including holy men who were conspicuously dead of natural causes, began to become venerated with approval of local bishops. This went on until 1170, when Pope Alexander the Stylish claimed any and all rights to canonization, because why the hell not. Three years later, it became actively illegal to venerate outside the Church's authority, with real-world laws to punish people for liking a dead guy just a little too much. Nothing particularly interesting to this conversation happens for quite a long time, until 1983 when JP II starts hacking bits off Alexander's game plan to streamline the process. One of the best bits to go was the dedicated position of opposition, someone responsible for the argument that the candidate for sainthood didn't deserve it. Arguments against can still be suggested, but to the best of my knowledge the Vatican no longer finds it necessary to challenge itself from within in almost any fashion.

The process begins with the potential saint's death, and before the first bureaucratic papers are shuffled a period of five years is supposed to elapse. This is to allow for fervor to die down, ostensibly to ensure that mob rule combined with the observable uptick in popular people's esteem after they die does not overwhelm what passes for reason at the Vatican. Agnes was not held to this tradition, as the examination of her writings – the first official step toward sainthood – began well before and was concluded by the time of her death. Following the examination and approval of the candidate's personal papers, their corpse is to be exhumed and examined. This is to ensure that no wacko cults have been messing around with the remains or using the tomb as a site for bizarre rituals, as well as the ritual lopping off of choice bits of the corpse to save as relics. You can almost swim in the irony, as well as feel a little sadness we never got to see the Pope chasing Agnes through the Vatican waving a pair of golden garden shears.

Once the Vatican ensures the candidate's corpse will stay where it is told and the choice cuts are securely pickled, the Pope publicly declares you a hero. It's really only an honorary thing at this point, as the candidate still doesn't get any feasts or churches named after them. It's worth noting that, at this point, the church will not acknowledge that the candidate is, in fact, in heaven at all. It seems counterintuitive, I know, to think that a person could be in line for sainthood without being in heaven, but nothing is so ironclad as a rule open to interpretation. There's some good news, though. The candidate can have their image graven across all kind of prayer-themed merchandise – probably nothing wrong with worshipping a graven image, after all – and use that merchandise to build a fanbase, thereby increasing the probability that some delusional person will credit their hallucinatory fantasy to the candidate's intercession. One could be forgiven at this point for thinking that this is less a somber and spiritual separation of the wheat from the chaff, more a brutally arrogant and solipsistic swimsuit contest judged on hysterical fervency and theocratic cheerleading.

We now reach the point Agnes had attained by the time of her death, attribution of miracles. Agnes shouldn't have even been considered for another half-decade, I remind you, but instead the Pope could not have thrown the miracle flag faster. It is at this third step in the canonization process that the church will finally publicly claim that the candidate's eternal being is ensconced firmly in the heavenly hereafter. Everything they preached from childhood indoctrination or adult conversion about how to get to heaven and avoid death was only the first part of the story. They withheld that not everyone would actually be getting MVP status, class warfare evidently being a problem in the afterlife as well, and that the path would involve years in whatever waiting room the Vatican prefers now – having renounced the horrific idea of limbo years ago – while guys in bathrobes read diaries and fiddle with corpses. Sounds fun to me, I don't know why they would bury the lead like that, but there you have it.

Beatification is attributed one of two ways, both on equally shaky rhetorical ground, I would say. Firstly, the candidate can be a martyr, meaning they died for their faith or as an act of heroic charity, presumably the bearing of another's mortal wound. Alternatively, they can be a confessor, the default position for saints these days. To be a confessor, it must be proven – for whatever that word is worth coming from the lips of a Pope – that the creator of the universe interceded directly to benefit a person who offered a prayer through the saint-elect, kind of like clicking through to Amazon from a website you like. These fraudulent miracle cures are well know to you, and they only proliferate due to the Catholic construct's unwillingness to repair the damage they have done in destitute countries without proper health care.

The final step before being fitted for a heavenly letterman's jacket is an encore miracle, which is why the ghoulish Agnes is currently in our public consciousness again. As part of JP II's streamlining process I mentioned earlier, part of the 800-year-old process left on the cutting room floor was the requirement of three intercessions. Currently only one additional conspiracy is required – the unfortunate man from Brazil – and the news is filled with fawning and completely complicit endorsement of the current Pope's thumbs up. No news outlet appears willing to state what is painfully obvious to honest thought: none of this is true, and it matters even less.

Despite the chorus to the contrary, the current Pope has done little to nothing regarding advancing the church into the 21^st century or guiding it to better mesh with modern society. Before Francis, Pope Benedict the Nazi-Faced threw open the pearly back door by validating locally venerated cult leaders at an unheard of pace; fanatics long dead, supported by the church, and with a large booster club who weren't waiting on the Vatican's approval or a cleared-up runny nose. Making a saint out of a monstrous woman who should be properly known for inflicting horrific dying conditions and absolutely no medical care whatsoever, in addition to being a well-known seller of indulgences to the most foul people you can imagine, will hopefully prove to be an unremovable nail in the Vatican's long-overdue coffin.

The Shop On The Corner

Before our enlightened liberal condition of buying our cannabis at the modern corner apothecary completely fogs over the memories of the soul-crushing dark ages – “The Time Before,” as our children will refer to it – I thought it important to take a moment for the glorification of that stalwart bastion of pre-reform convenient drug distribution: the bodega.

The public acceptance of cannabis as common, excellent for mild pain relief and general relaxation, and in no way associated with demonic conspiracy will drive a constantly regenerating stream of brisk new business to the dispensaries. These dispensaries, provided we can sort out what boils down to zoning and finance details, will soon be as plentiful and irritating as Starbucks and catering to the same kinds of crowds. Nothing is the same kind of satisfying as watching a hippie stereotype change into a capitalist stereotype overnight. Phillip Morris is, at this moment, poised and ready to dominate the legal cannabis market with their monolithic agricultural and distribution network, and that's the pot the trendy kids and the newcomers will be buying at the chain corner shops. This slightly bothers me, in an inconsequential though chronic way, as I think teenagers are missing out on a rite of passage by buying their first bag off Camel's narcotics rack. Until very recently, the only two options for someone like me to purchase pot have been the friendly neighborhood dealer or the bodega, the latter of which I will now describe for those who haven't had the pleasure.

And it was a pleasure, chum.

Bodegas have existed in one form or another in every successful civilization. They are a staple of commerce, filling a need created by the population shift from dispersed agrarian to concentrated industrial. The customer base is the blue-collar community, with the errant white-collar cat slumming it, and the student/pensioner shopper who buys only enough white bread and Pop-Tarts to live on for 24-hour periods. Bigger than the walking vendor's fruit cart, smaller than the proper grocery store, the bodega progressed from the miniscule corner shop to an international force. Asian cities, particularly Taiwan, have landscapes virtually dominated by shops like 7-11.

It looks like Michael Bay directed a remake of Blade Runner.

My bodega was downtown, in a stupidly scenic location surrounded by lush trees and century-old buildings. Just walking among the stunning architecture Oregon produced during the years its fledgling towns became proper cities is sometimes breathtaking, and having beautiful structures mindfully nestled into the pre-existing majesty of the area as a backdrop for a minor drug transaction is certainly one of the most pleasant ways I expect one can engage in such behavior. The bodega was on 13^th street, one of the main east/west drags, a one-way shot that was part of my late night aimless driving loop. It sat in the University's shadow and took up a third of the block, sitting wall-to-wall with one of the finest bars ever to exist on its eastern side, a bar which supplied the bodega with a stream of cigarette and hot case food purchases until three AM every morning. The buildings were recognized as historic places, but out of longevity alone instead of being any kind of thematic examples. They looked like art deco buildings from 1920's Los Angeles, but in the proper light they could have been the city hall/bank/post office in a barely-developed Tombstone. They were visually striking as specific in a non-specific way, timeless and geographically indeterminate. Walls textured like an adobe fort, with window and door frames simply designed but more than functional. In three small alcoves high on the wall and facing the street, virtually unnoticed unless pointed out, were small Roman statuaries of women in different poses.

Two sets of double doors, the majority of which were glass framed very thinly by wood painted a dark forest green holding brass fixtures burnished by a hundred thousand hands, opened onto 13^th street. One set of these doors was recessed in each end of the building, directly next to the cashier and as far opposite as possible. The owners had lined the walls with drink coolers, but had made the rather poor decision to stock the beer and Boone's Farm in the coolers closest to the second set of doors, and therefore farthest from the cashier's control. This product location decision had the foreseeably adverse effect of inspiring alcoholic thieves to get their cardiovascular exercise for the day by entering through the cashier's door, picking up a handful of items as they walked the aisles to lower suspicions, then dropping everything to run out the second set of doors with a case or armful of forties. I eventually learned to spot the differences between the angle someone holds their head at when they're genuinely figuring out what they want versus the angle used when they're waiting for you to look away. In response to this unremitting rise in skullduggery, the owners applied more of their wisdom and began locking the second set of doors at six every night, which did little to stem overall theft but made the beer coolers seem like less of a problem.

Nahasapeemapetilans they were not.

Since I never personally had the occasion to require the bodega's services when I was on foot, I would drive past the double doors, turning right off thirteenth and right again into the kind of back alley one would find severed ears in. I would then ease the delicately hideous curves of my Ford Maverick (and later that goddamn Jetta) into one of the city parking spaces that were painted by people who had either never seen a picture of an American car or generally despised the concept of internal combustion, and walk past the bar's rear smoking porch to enter the bodega through the back door.

It was unmarked, save for a tattered and sun-bleached “Employees Only” sign held on by what used to be two screws. Slightly larger than one would expect for a service entrance, it was set underneath a Reagan-era air conditioning unit shoved into a rough-cut hole in the gnarled exterior wall. This Cooling Unit of Damocles was supported in afterthought by good intentions and what appeared to be two repurposed metal plant hangers secured with an admirable amount of flashing tape. Enveloping Schrodinger’s Alcove was what could be legally referred to as a shelter, an eight-foot structure supported with pressure-treated 4x4's and wrapped in trailer park-style plastic corrugated roofing on all sides. The plastic was probably blue to begin with, but time makes fools of us all, and the corrugate had become a brittle thing with a color halfway between beige and sad. It was in that odd space among empty banana boxes and spent fountain soda syrup bags that my connection and I would stand together, bathed in that strangely-tinted light, and share a smoke when I was the only business. During one of our safety meetings on a crushing summer afternoon in August our conversation was abruptly silenced by a stunning flash. The bolt, though I never saw it directly, licked close enough to us for me to listen to the innocent and unsuspecting air become scorched and make a sound not unlike a pit viper maliciously ripping a piece of paper. Before I had time to recognize that high wail keening in my skull, the thunder upended over us and rolled through town like someone owed it money. Seconds later hail began falling, timidly at first and then with vigor, and it did nothing to cool the air. Blocks over we heard the first car alarm start, and more joined, all backed by the cruel percussion of the hail. We stood and took all that beauty in, him and I.

Imagine this, but made of electricity and fire.

But I digress. The transaction was conducted thusly: By the time I had crossed the threshold my end of the deal was already folded and concealed in the palm of my hand, as illustrated best by Mr. Steve Martin in the Academy Award-adjacent movie My Blue Heaven. Walking straight would have exited me out one of the front double-doors, the cashier's counter was at one o'clock, and next to my end of that counter was a small card table which always supported an open soda and a book. I would go to the table and grab the book, dropping the money next to where it had been and commenting on the author or some nonsense, then walk away to grab something from the cooler that would punish my treacherous kidneys. My connection would know how much I wanted from the amount I had left, and the money would vanish. I would bring my purchases up, and when he reached under the counter for a paper bag, that bag would come up with my supplies already ensconced within. I would exit through the same back door, and once in the car would immediately open the bag to fill the air with the rich and comforting smell of a relaxing afternoon. No tax stamp, no one else's business, no more complicated than buying a sandwich. Sounds weird as hell, I know, but that's how we did things in The Time Before.

You kids come see Grandpa any time, now.

Render Unto Caesar

The road from “congress shall make no law” to tax-free churches, congressional chaplains, and currency sanctioned by Christianity is marked by complacency and conciliation on the part of the non-believers.

The argument, which you have no doubt heard plenty of times, that America was founded by people who worshipped the washboard-stomached Jesus seen in Pat Robertson's dusty sexual fantasies and who desired to build a new nation devoted to the glorification of that filthy hippie and his bizarre and thoughtless teachings is still pressed into service today, trotted out like a moth-eaten shawl to be draped over any number of the debates we face.

Despite the obvious unconstitutionality of the entire premise, to this very day the United States military pays official chaplains to serve in every branch out of taxpayer-funded government coffers, and has had authorization to do so since 1791. There is no interpretation of the establishment or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment that allows for a government-sanctioned chaplain of any denomination to minister to the armed forces, which is self-evident without the authority of Madison or Jefferson and their arguments to back it up. Despite being challenged in the United States Court of Appeals, no willingness has been shown to risk displeasing America's religious theocrats by forcing the position to be filled by a non-combat volunteer. The irony of a paid military chaplain swearing to uphold the Constitution should be obvious without me having to elaborate on it. Fortunately, those of us who would have no idea how to approach addressing the problem are shored up by the efforts of organizations like the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Military Association of Atheists, both of whom work not only to defend the rights of the non-religious in both private and military life, but to re-establish the secular values our country was, evidentially speaking, established on.

We were pretty into Egyptian and Grecian style, though. Kind of our "Joy Division" phase.

Deism was, to be profoundly generous, still defensible at the time of America's establishment. Collectively, we were unfamiliar with microbiology and the Beagle's monumental voyage was still half a century away. It could be forgiven, knowing what the best scientific information was, for a thinking person to come to the conclusion that the intrinsic order in the universe – “the way of things” – was so impossibly clockwork and perfect as to necessitate, at the very least, an unimaginable force to establish the observable laws things operated by. This is the “unmoved mover” you may have heard of, a current favorite of the creationist cults to explain away their utter mindless arrogance in the face of an utter paucity of any evidence. It may not only have been defensible or forgivable, it may have been the only logical and rational conclusion one could come to based on the evidence at hand. Theism, with its nonsense based on an intervening wrathful creator who performs miracles and picks favorites, was already in decline among the population possessed of the luxury of free time to participate in Enlightenment thinking. People understood that a prime mover argument can and does only lead you to an infinitely regressing repetition of the same question: “Who made the maker?” These volleys of logic were met by the church, then as now, with vehement retaliation and dismissals based on arguments from ignorance. Unfortunately for us but incredibly beneficial for the religious, the tools with which the notion of a creator could be abolished entirely were still generations off.

The Presidents

George Washington appears to have been that most rare (and personally valuable to myself) of all religious people: the private one. While it is public record that he purchased pews in several churches and attended services regularly while in Philadelphia, Washington chose to spend his time at Mount Vernon more wisely. He attended services sparsely there, according to biographer Paul Ford, and later anecdotes seeking to discredit him publicly did so by reporting that cards and drinking were engaged in by Washington and visitors to his home most vigorously on Sundays. Washington almost never mentioned God by name in public speeches, referring instead to the ideas of Providence and a Grand Architect. His farewell address, which is most commonly referenced as concrete proof of Washington's Christian faith, was not written by him but by Alexander Hamilton, and Washington in fact deliberately removed passages connecting morality with divinity and avoided entirely addressing any particulars of his belief. As for his behavior in solitude, both Hamilton and Washington's staff write of interrupting his morning prayer, which was evidently a regular and solitary-by-preference practice. It is still contended that Washington introduced the oath of fealty to God in the presidential inauguration, despite refutations from the Library of Congress and Mount Vernon. People far more educated on Washington's life than myself continue to argue from both sides of the aisle exactly where on the spectrum from deism to Christianity he actually lied, but insofar as this subject is concerned his exact disposition is irrelevant. What matters is that if he was a devout and practicing Christian, he kept it to himself.

And we revere him to this day...

Thomas Jefferson, as a retirement hobby to kill the time not spent founding the University of Virginia as a bastion of higher learning unsullied by religious influence, engaged himself by taking a scalpel to the New Testament, removing any and all passages which he thought to be unfounded, magical, or otherwise insulting to the intelligence of a reasoned person. The resulting extant text, which is available to all, is an impossibly-thin tome which tells a rather uninteresting story of a young man who says things that irritate some while endearing him to others. The final page of this story, which I find the most edifying, is three paragraphs long and consists of Jesus dying, being buried, and everyone leaving. No resurrection, no fanciful rays of sunshine to be recreated in hideous oil paintings for the next two millenia, but the relating of a man's death. Furthermore, in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (one of the three things included on his obelisk as worth remembering him for, his time as President notably absent) Jefferson writes clearly on the errancy of religious faction having any influence in civil discourse whatsoever. In dissolving any affiliation between the colonies and the Church of England, Jefferson sought to prevent the cudgel of a state church from being wielded against the citizens of the new republic. The worst accusation that could be leveled at him would be the aforementioned label of deist, as he describes a creator of the mind and “departure from the plan” enforced on the populace by religious leaders who sought – then as now – to prevent the free exchange of ideas while lining their own pockets. However, nowhere does he mention any thought that the universe was created for him or anyone else, or that an intervening creator answered prayers, affected the outcome of events, or had a preferred sexual style. The personification of this deistic creator by Jefferson in the Statute, sometimes feebly pointed to as support for accusations of theism, can also be accurately dismissed as a poetic device, seeing as he later gives the concept of truth the same embodiment, albeit feminine.

Again, super respectful reverence is all we know how to do.

The Treaty of Tripoli & The First Barbary War

Securing our independence brought the need to ensure our own security. The treaties enacted by England to protect trade routes and crew obviously no longer applied to our nation, and in 1797 John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli into law. This treaty was to establish our business and cautiously peaceful relationship with the Muslim empire in the Barbary States, who consistently had great success in seizing both our ships and their crew for their own use. The second article of the Treaty, which I argue is second only to the First Amendment in clarity and intent of purpose, states as follows:

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmen; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

It's a rather beautiful passage, I think, especially when compared to the soul-crushingly indigestible language of our current legislation. But beyond beauty, the most important thing about this passage is that it clearly shows the intention of our nation to hold no brook with religion. Adams may have been far too naive and trusting when concerned with the Muslim theocracy and the ability of its adherents to be trusted, and he was completely mistaken in implying that our non-starter status meant we would never declare war against a religious state, but it couldn't be more obvious that our founding and principles are established as those of a secular nation founded on the rule of law, not a terrifying theocratic nightmare based on deluded religious texts.

It really is everything Hitchens warned us about.

Proving Adams' trust was wildly misplaced, the forces of Tripoli continued to hijack and make slaves of American ships. Seeking explanation, Adams and Jefferson traveled to Tripoli, where their only response was passages in the Qur’an commanding “all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave.” Jefferson fought with Congress, arguing that any money paid would only encourage repeated offense. Upon Jefferson's election, Tripoli vastly increased the amount of their demands, which Jefferson finally had the power to refuse. The Navy, recently reconstructed, was at Jefferson's disposal with the caveat to do no more than necessary to defend. Without consulting Congress Jefferson sent the Navy to attack Tripoli, beginning the four year conflict that would end with General Eaton's marines and mercenaries brought the city of Derna to the ground in 1805. This is, by the way, the first time the American flag was flown over a military victory in a foreign land, and the reason Tripoli is in the second line of the Marine Corps Hymn.

The Money

When the time came, as it must in any successful fledgling rebellion, to design a national seal representative of the ideals of the new republic, Samuel Adams appointed an artist in Philadelphia called William Barton. The now-familiar thirteen-layer pyramid crowned with the Eye of Providence was what Barton delivered, with the wholly unfamiliar-to-us latin phrases Deo Favente (“With God's Favor”) and Perennis (“Everlasting”). There was no attempt on Barton's behalf to obfuscate his intentions and belief that the Providential Eye belonged to an intervening Christian god, which was clearly not good enough for Adams.

It rocks your very world, doesn't it?

Charles Thompson, the Secretary of the Congress and a teacher of latin, was tasked with refining the design to bring it more in line with what Adams wanted. Thompson removed the religious references entirely, substituting the phrases Annuit Coeptis (“To/He Approve/s Our Undertaking”) and Novus Ordo Seclorum (“New Order of the Ages”) while retaining the thirteen-layer pyramid, Eye of Providence, and E Pluribus Unum (“One Out Of Many”). This adjustment fulfilled the requirements, changing the intended message from “God gave us this and it's ours forever” to “Can you guys fucking believe how lucky we were to pull this off?”

"I gotcha Deo Favente right here, pal."

The ridiculous motto of the United States since 1956 has been “In God We Trust,” a noxious phrase opposed by anyone who can recognize the meaninglessness of the words even without recognizing the direct contradiction to our nation's principles. This indelicate usurper is a holdover from the Civil War, where the phrase was used by both sides to claim divine support. Since at least 1873, this mindless affirmation has been on our coinage by order of the Congress, not appearing on the paper money until 1957. The same level of blind fervor for empty religious-themed patriotism wouldn't be seen again until the World Trade Center attack, when once again our Union claimed the backing of – for all anyone can tell – the same god who compelled our enemies.

The Congress

In examining religion's perfidious influence on democracy, specifically in our representative bodies, it is helpful to compare the original intent with the current reality. Given that, ideally, both the House and Senate would be filled with individuals selected by their communities as best suited to represent their interests and ideals, one would expect the resulting bodies to reflect the broad spectrum of ideas and attitudes seen nationwide. To examine that a little closer, we can apply that most tenuous of metrics: the public opinion poll. Opinion polls always make me wince the slightest bit, as there are so many clumsily simple ways their data becomes skewed. From convenience bias to acquiescence, these kinds of surveys have many obstacles to assembling data into information, but in many cases they are the best possible way to gauge what people say they think.

Which, unfortunately, assumes *they* know what they think.

Pew Research reported in 2012 that 16.1% of Americans who responded to their poll self-identified as having no religious affiliation. As mentioned, there is no reliable way to determine what percentage of people who respond in the affirmative are lying to the pollster to fulfill an imagined expectation, or claiming affiliation out of habit or guilt. As you can infer for yourself, it is improbable that there exist enough physical structures to house all the worshippers who claim to be such fervent practitioners.

There are 535 voting members of Congress, which would suggest that roughly 86 members of that august body should be atheist. If we further narrow the field by disregarding the 5.8% of Pew respondents who felt “religious unaffiliated” described their views (as opposed to the rather confusing group labeled “secular unaffiliated”) we are left with around 55 Congresspeople that should reliably be found doing something useful on Sunday morning. This is, self-evidently, at odds with the precisely zero (sometimes one, as of late, but not for long) representatives of the nation's public who profess to be unburdened by childish superstition, and flies in the face of the decidedly Christian-flavored political grandstanding we must constantly slog through.

It can only feed, never produce...

It may actually be fair and accurate to say that America is a Christian nation, not by design but through lazy arrogance or weakness on the part of those of us who knew better. To call it de facto is to give it too much credence, but the fact remains. To admit this is not to agree with the historically ignorant who claim a Christian founding for our nation, nor is it further concession or conciliation to theocracy with an enthusiastic allowance for it to reign. The fervor with which the cry of rationality and forced retreat for religion seems to keep growing can only suggest to us that the tide turns in our favor. We can perhaps now be said to be in recovery, a nation with a serious problem that we have just recently become mature enough to accept and fix.

Cruelty In A Christmas Carol

The lesson imparted by Dickens' best-known tale is not to seek joyful connection with your fellow humans, but to wait for your oppressor's moment of illness-induced weakness and strike with impunity.

171 years ago Britain was experiencing a resurgence in the popularity of Christmas wholly foreign to us now, blessed as we are with a Christmas holiday that is attempting to overtake Halloween and must be bludgeoned to death halfway through January. The Industrial Revolution was ending, but the negative effects of high-density urbanization in Britain were devastating to the lower levels of social strata and, therefore, the morale of the country at large. As a result, people leapt at the chance to have their own Christmas tree, recently made trendy along with the Christmas card and public caroling. It may not seem like much now, but it was a remarkably effective way to take everyone's mind off the daily horror of pestilence-soaked London before the invention of Valium and Netflix. Hot on the heels of the new-fangled trees and cards Dickens published his little Christmas yarn, and it is with us now, after having been filmed twenty-one times, adapted for television twenty-seven times, and translated into at least two dozen languages. But, as I will show, we've been getting it wrong for almost two centuries.

The story is well known to you, and I won't rehash any more of it than I absolutely must. In the interest of preventing sloth, however, I decided to not rely on my slightly pickled recollection based tenuously on thirty-four years spent watching the film in a dozen or so different flavors, usually repeatedly and with only a fraction of my attention over the course of fifteen or twenty consecutive days. Details can start to run together due to familiarity, so I thought it necessary to re-read the original text. I set out to write this convinced that Scrooge became startled by his ghostly doorknocker and fell backward down the steps, as any attempt on my part to remember the scene involved that particular. I was entirely wrong, and not just because of the medicinally-applied alcohol. As it turns out, various directors and screenwriters throughout the years have decided that this timeless classic needed a little punching up in places, similar to Michael Bay turning The Transformers into two hours of crayons in a blender while an old Calvin Klein underwear model never quite makes it out of his wet paper bag. These kinds of thing must be resisted, and so in deference to placing far more importance on tiny details than they deserve, Dickens' edition will be the one I refer to.

Do you want a Wahlberg as Tiny Tim? Because Bay will do it.

It should be noted that, across a century's worth of film interpretations ranging from abysmal to your personal favorite, The Muppet's Christmas Carol objectively stands out as the film which keeps onscreen dialogue closest to the original text. Gonzo the Great, acting as Dickens acting as The Narrator, speaks whole paragraphs word for word in the singularly simple yet striking style. You recall the early scene which finds Scrooge arriving home and turning his key in the door lock only to be startled by seeing Jacob Marley's face where the door knocker should be. Dickens describes the specter as having “a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar,” and Gonzo speaks those words on camera. The inclusion of that particular line of narration, a simile for which no amount of explanation can bring clarity if one lacks the understanding, makes this interpretation of the story unlike any other and deserving of appreciation, interminable musical numbers notwithstanding.

Well done, rat and Whatever.

Ebenezer Scrooge was an asshole. That much we can all agree on. His moods and attitudes were such a clear cut stripe of constantly mean-spirited, greedy, and confrontational that his name is now invoked as archetypal shorthand when seeking a way to describe horrible people we know. Scrooge is the progenitor to Snidely Whiplash, the Nazi dentist from Marathon Man, and Mitt Romney. Scrooge is the reason one wheel of a shopping cart is always fucked up, and why the toilet seat is always frigid. To wit: “External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did.” His financial dominance over the town and people in it is absolute, and has created such antipathy toward him that no one will give a moment's thought before taking his dressing gown and bed curtains away to fence before his dead body has cooled, as some of the more timid adaptations choose to omit. When Scrooge arrives on Christmas morning with kind words and gifts for everyone, instead of reacting as any abused people naturally would – with mistrust and wariness – he is joyfully accepted. Dickens would have you believe the warmth of the Christmas spirit had overtaken everyone and elevated them as a community, but this is inexplicable and inconsistent with how the group could reasonably be predicted to react.

On the other hand, you rarely find bloodthirsty mobs in heartwarming classics.

At the opening of the story, a collector comes to Scrooge asking for money to benefit the poor and hungry, and Scrooge sends him away with the suggestion he enlist the services of poor houses and debtor's prisons. When, the following morning, Scrooge pounces on him with gleeful promises of a substantial donation including “many back payments,” the charity worker doesn't react with the derision and scorn one would rightly expect. Instead, man acts gullibly elated at the good news. This doesn't just cast doubt on his selection as a solicitor and handler of money, it paints him as likely too stupid to survive a haircut. When your malevolent overlord becomes startlingly gracious to you without warning, what right-thinking, pattern-recognizing person wouldn't steel themselves for the other shoe to drop on the cruel indignity that is surely to come?

Upon waking Christmas morning, Scrooge publicly engages in behavior that is so drastically far from his normal disposition that it should raise serious concerns among anyone paying the slightest attention. He becomes excessively generous with his money instead of unerringly greedy, displays exceedingly good will towards his fellow citizens instead of enmity, treats his staff as a valued asset instead of a manipulated commodity, and seems to become the philanthropic patriarchal pillar of the community in less time than the sun shines on one of the shortest winter days. Everyone just takes this in stride, for absolutely no reason, and even actively participates. The young boy Scrooge sends to the butcher should never have believed for a second the errand was real, it being far more likely that he would have taken the opportunity to throw a shit-covered rock from the gutter at Scrooge's head. Even more disturbing are the choices of the shop butcher, who is both open for business at dawn on Christmas morning and willing to personally bring one his most expensive items C.O.D. to the town's biggest asshole on the word of a filthy street urchin.

"Isn't this a face you can trust?"

Accustomed as we all are to the moral of the story, and to the unexplained and slightly suspicious desire we all seem to innately have for Scrooge to change his ways and become Tiny Tim's BFF, I think we've let a cynical accounting of the tale remain neglected. Scrooge's turn at the end of the story to become a broad-spectrum beneficiary of mankind is still mildly motivating and heart-warming in a contemporary reading, as well it should be. But as warm and fuzzy as it may make us feel to witness his seamless transition to benevolence and the community's immediate and unconditional embrace of him, as vindicating as it might feel to know Scrooge has sponged away the writing on not only his stone but the Cratchits as well, we have allowed an idea that makes us happy to go unchallenged due to the probable unpleasantness of examining it. In fact, an attempt to check in once more on Scrooge would no doubt be an unpleasant and shockingly ugly rehash of the first fifth of the story with none of the transcendent experiences or redemption of the latter sections. Because of how I say he came about it, Scrooge's philanthropic transformation will likely be brutally temporary, and the resulting backlash as he returns to his normal disposition will no doubt carry with it vicious overcompensation to correct for his resultant shame and embarrassment.

"Mandatory quartz buttplugs for everyone!"

As mentioned before, the extant text has no account of Scrooge suffering any head injury as a result of either falling on his steps or any other accident. Since some of the movies have seen fit to include it, however, there's no harm in taking a look. Falling backwards as he did, Scrooge would have suffered a trauma to his occipital lobe and, one would assume, a countercoup trauma to his frontal lobe. My degree from the Hollywood Upstairs Medical College is enough for me to know that occipital damage could produce hallucinations while frontal lobe damage could create the dramatic behavioral changes. Unfortunately, damage to the extent I am describing would likely be accompanied by a host of other problems like uncoordinated speech and movement. The damage, combined with no witnesses to Scrooge's fall and the missed opportunity to employ the stunning efficacy of Victorian-era medicine means the chances of Scrooge having a cogent exchange with the errand boy regarding the availability of the prize goose, much less awakening from his time-traveling coma, would be slim to none. It's not all depressing, though. In fact, given one of the more striking but common behavioral changes reported in “didn't-kill-you” head trauma, it's a wonder we haven't been treated to Scrooge unceremoniously displaying his Victorian twig-and-berries to the assembled onlookers without provocation. I argue that some old-fashioned British dick-swinging could have made Tiny Tim's final speech that much more poignant.

There's a "third leg" joke in there somewhere...

Another possible explanation for Scrooge's established standard of selfish and miserly behavior could be a simple result of oxytocin deficiency. Oxytocin is a hormone produced primarily in the brain without which society would be harder to maintain than it is now, as its effects are associated with trust, social bonding, and generosity. Artificially-delivered oxytocin creates a predictable result in testing environments, making people more likely to share or empathize, for example. In some people the receptors responsible for uptaking oxytocin are not as plentiful as they should be, due to genetic abnormalities, and these people have marked differences in social interaction and an exaggerated anxiety response. This kind of condition would be completely undetectable to the medical community of the time, and in any case untreatable overnight and could be in no way affected by spectral intercession of the kind Dickens describes.

Some "smoke-tral" intercession, though...right? I apologize.

Since neurochemicals cannot be blamed, and Dickens' own hand precludes head injury, we are left with the most probable explanation, an answer Scrooge himself had known the entire time. When he accused Marley of being composed “more of gravy than of grave,” he was exactly right. Dickens describes early on how Scrooge's evening routine plays out, with him taking “his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern.” Given that Marley's arrival and his dinner can only have been separated by a handful of hours, his evening meal -- which he relates as consisting of beef, mustard, cheese, potato, and the aforementioned gravy -- would not have had sufficient time to incubate enough pathogens to create illness. However, since Scrooge's behaviors as a creature of habit have been spelled out in great detail, it seems reasonable to conclude that a poorly-handled bit of uncured meat or gravy from earlier in the week is undoubtably responsible. Some nasty bout of acute foodborne poisoning delivered from any number of the readily available and nauseatingly disgusting sources in overcrowded and choleric London could be responsible for his feverish hallucinations, and the shock resulting from the mortal terror instilled in his mind due to those hallucinations could then conceivably produce his philanthropy. But, like all moments we consider life-changing while their perfume hangs in the air, the resulting sway these visions had over him and his strength of will no doubt faded with the passage of time. It is truly unfortunate Dickens never gave us a sequel, so we could see Scrooge return to caning orphans in the street on New Year's Eve, once his stomach felt better.

"Quartz! For EVERYONE!"

Turning to the people of Britain now, and their astonishingly out-of-character response to Scrooge's turnaround given his history and character, just a little investigation finds a cleverly hidden moral underneath the many obfuscating layers of lofty community togetherness. Dickens would have you believe that, were your master – a term my contemporaries use sexually, having no understanding of what it would be like to live under the whims of another human being – to appear at your doorstep on Christmas morning, you would throw open your arms and take him into your family celebration without the slightest compunction. Indeed, the way the Cratchits are painted would make any kind of effort on Bob's part to stand up for himself entirely out of character, so it's not a terrible stretch, but no one should believe it for a moment. I ask you to consider the motivation of these people for their instant and inexplicable acceptance. Instead of being an example of redemption through forgiveness, Scrooge is the lame animal who doesn't know enough to try and hide its infirmity. Why would the kind-hearted townspeople take advantage of him? For the same reason you or I would were we presented with a mentally broken Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch handing out diamonds or Rolex watches or whatever it is the superrich keep in their pockets to tip jet bartenders. I say they saw him coming, thanks to advance notice from the street urchin and butcher, and were laying in wait to try and get whatever they could out of him. By presenting all toothless smiles and unbared claws, the townspeople displayed their cynical and shrewd calculation of Scrooge's state as a poorly-stitched moneybag. You know the kind, with the dollar sign on the side that the Beagle Boys used to carry?

Seen here in a historical document on loan from the Library of Congress.

There is no alarm at his condition or investigation as to how his change of heart came to be, but unquestioning acceptance of a Christmas miracle. It is perhaps worth mentioning that this is the first non-religious story to introduce the now-familiar concept of Christmas miracles, though the implied significance attached to arbitrary calendar dates continues to elude my understanding. Had Scrooge become Daddy Warbucks on Saint Swivven's Day, or of his own volition rather than the threats of spectral terrorists, would his charity then be less heart-warming or – if you can stomach it – inspirational?