The stomach-churning, brain-curdling news that Donald Trump is the 45th American president continues to give rise to all manner of existentialist questions like: What the fuck? Is this really happening? Is there a God? And if there is, what the hell is he thinking?
I know feminists prefer referring to God as she, but in the wake of recent events, they might want to change their position. No self-respecting female creator of every creeping thing that creepeth, flying thing that flyeth and fishy thing that swimmeth could possibly have had a hand in the elevation of this ludicrous tangerine-coated semi-literate superpatriot to the most powerful position on earth.
If I’m right – and there’s no reason to think I’m not – then God is not only a man, but he is an arrogant, combative God who won’t listen to reason. What am I talking about. You just have to read the Bible to get an idea of where the Almighty stands on a whole range of issues. He sure ain’t no bleeding heart liberal, that’s for sure. No wonder he had his hippy son whacked by the Jews. Or was it the Romans? Jewish Romans, maybe.
Details are sketchy. Ballpoint pens hadn’t been invented yet and the only reporter on the scene got drunk that night and lost the tablets he’d spent all day carving.
Editor: “Are you sure this is what Pontius Pilate said?”
Reporter: “Yes, of course. Well, close enough. I’m paraphrasing here.”
Pontius: “Fake news! Feed him to the lions.”
Fast-forward a couple of thousand years and not much has changed. The internet is groaning under an avalanche of slander, subterfuge and lies so bald they make Lord Voldemort look like Zack Galifianakis.
Donald Trump’s penchant for prevarication has got journalists fact-checking like never before. The problem is, Trump supporters care little for the facts. And why should they, when their hero makes it up as he goes along? Trump and his inner coven are utterly shameless when it comes to subverting the truth and his supporters couldn’t care less. Or, as the Americans would have it, could care less. Which makes about as much sense as Kellyanne Melted-Horseface before she’s had her meds.
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the American Press Institute, questions if we’re already in a post fact-check world. “There’s a difference between facts and knowledge. I can tell you your facts are wrong but not change your belief.”
Which takes us back to religion. Atheists, when they’re not busy drinking the blood of virgin sacrifices, know there’s little point in badgering the offensively religious with science. Their belief will not change. It’s called faith. Which, as we know, has less than perfect vision. Fact carries a baseball bat. Faith, a white stick.
Did Schrodinger even have a cat? We can’t be sure. What we are sure about is that America’s new Secretary for Education is a woman by the name of Betsy DeVos. She’s Cruella De Vil in ugly shoes and it’s only a matter of time before she starts making lampshades from the skins of young public schoolboys.
She’s one of the billionaires with whom her president is repopulating the Washington swamp now that it’s been drained of everything true and good. She said not too long ago that guns should be allowed in schools for protection against “potential grizzlies”. I don’t know if she meant actual bears or if it was a euphemism for rappers, pot-smokers and the homeless.
Speaking at an evangelical event a few years ago, she proclaimed, “Our desire is to confront the culture in which we all live today in ways which will continue to help advance God’s kingdom.”
These are bowel-loosening words for us heathen scum living in the relative safety of Africa, but far more so for the juvenile heretics and pagans trapped in the American public schooling system. Let’s go back to the Middle Ages and do it right this time, goddammit!
One thing you can be sure of is that Cretinella DeVos will not be pushing schools to include evolutionary biology in their syllabuses. Syllabi. Whatever.
Four in ten Americans believe God created humans ten thousand years ago. The hardliners say six thousand. Half of Americans believe humans evolved, but then ruin it by saying God guided the process.
Then there’s the intelligent design movement. They think they’re smarter than the creationists, but the jury’s out on that. Not really. The jury came back a long time ago. I’m just trying really hard not to offend anyone.
I don’t feel like I’m the creation of an intelligent designer at all. I drink too much, never watch rugby and pretend that my dogs aren’t mine when they defecate on the beach. I don’t give to charity and I shout at old people when they drive badly. I have way too many design flaws and should have been recalled long before now.
Maybe that’s what death is. You get recalled because you are defective. After your warranty is withdrawn, you line up outside the intelligent designer’s workshop along with all the other broken people. The queue must be horrendous. Bring a book.
After waiting a few hundred years, the intelligent designer hoists you on to his workbench, clamps you in his divine vice and gives you a tweaking with his celestial spanner and supernatural screwdriver. It’s gets a bit tricky from this point on. The only way he can get you back into the race is by rebirthing you, but now the good ship Faith is drifting dangerously close to the rocky shores of Reincarnation. So scrap that idea.
Perhaps the designer simply strips you of your consciousness and tosses your carcass into an unmarked grave on the desolate outskirts of the Pantene Nebula.
I don’t really feel like God made me, either. God has made some terrible mistakes and there are certainly days I think I might be one of them. But doubts do creep in. I mean, really, make the earth in just six days? It takes me two weeks to put shelves up.
If God has a plan for all of us, as the Christians would have it, then why won’t he give me an indication of what the hell it is? Maybe he already has. Still, going to the beach or sitting in pubs writing rubbish doesn’t seem like much of a plan. Then again, the Christians don’t claim he has a fabulously awesome plan for everyone.
I think maybe God has fallen asleep, because sometimes the sound of him snoring comes out of my bum. Or maybe God is speaking through my bum. Maybe I have fallen asleep and he is telling me to wake up and be a better person. Maybe I should put my bum on eBay.
As I’ve already mentioned, most Americans don’t believe in evolution. This is not necessarily because they are in-bred reactionary rednecks, but rather because scientists are pathetic when it comes to marketing their discoveries.
The remnants of a five-million-year-old Homo are dug up in one or other godforsaken flyblown corner of Africa and a man in a white coat appears on television squinting nervously into the camera, saying, “Um. Sorry to bother everybody, but we seem to have found something that could be, well, rather important.”
What they should be doing is dressing up in yellow seersucker suits and glittering top hats and taking the bones on the road. Turn it into an event. A bacchanalian carnival of discovery. They should ride through towns on the backs of painted elephants, drinking champagne from the bottle and brandishing the skull of the flat-faced man of Kenya while shouting through megaphones fashioned from narwhal tusks, “So where’s your god now?”
In the meantime, I have applied for membership to the fastest growing carbohydrate-based religion in the world. Pastafarians believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster created life on earth 4000 years ago when very drunk. I think they may be on to something.
In the words of church founder, Bobby Henderson, “We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10 000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5 730 years. But what our scientist does not realise is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.”
I am particularly drawn to this church because every Friday is a religious holiday. Also, heaven has a beer volcano and a stripper factory.