‘It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics’Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love, 1973.
As if flying wasn’t stressful enough, two instances have been reported of aircraft passengers being subjected to close encounters of the weird kind on American air transportation. Is it a mania brought about by, in their own minds, being twenty thousand feet nearer to the North Korea in the sky to which they aspire? Remember, Jesus and his dad ‘love’ you, but only if you give them blind, unconditional, fanatical, eternal praise and devotion, otherwise it’s ‘off to the gulag with you laddie and lassie’.
On Delta airways an American female gospel singer was in an altercation with a flight attendant after she attempted to perform and proselytise to the passengers. ‘I’m doing what the Lord is telling me to do,’ she said. Voices in the head; isn’t there a term for that? At least those who used to stand on the street wearing a sandwich-board that said ‘Repent! Judgement is at hand’ could be more easily ignored. As could Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons appearing on your doorstep. Two steps backward and a shut door in that instance prevent further unwanted disruption to your life. But imagine if you’re captive in an aeroplane and…
…here we go again. A woman is having what’s described as a ‘huge meltdown’ on a Frontier Airline’s flight. A beanie-wearing female passenger shouts that the breakdown is being caused by a ‘real devil that wants to kill each and every one of y’all including your family members’. Isn’t she getting her religions mixed up? ‘She’s possessed!’ The devil is real, beanie woman shouts. ‘She needs help! I’ll tell you right now, Jesus Christ is the way, there’s nobody that’s gonna come to God, the Father, without Jesus Christ.’ ‘Who doesn’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ?’ (educate yourself; read the surveys, more and more every day), the woman demands as people mutter. ‘If y’all don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ, I suggest you find one.’
It’s not reported whether this suggestion was politely declined or whether other suggestions of their own came from the passengers subjected to this unwanted tirade (MailOnline 12 and 22 November).
These ladies have been missing a trick, which is, this sort of thing with a television audience of many more than a plane full can earn you loads of bucks.
The Guardian (4 November) reports that the new American House of Representatives Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, has an ‘inerrant biblical truth leading him to reject science. Johnson was a ‘young earth creationist’, holding that a literal reading of Genesis means that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and humans walked alongside dinosaurs’.
DC
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