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| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1 | ||||
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Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 2
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I was a member of the church once. I still believe that there is a force of good in the universe—maybe even a personality that you can call on that guides and blesses. But I also see that there is serious evil in the world as well. It gets its power from Ignorance and Fear, the two devils that work hand in hand on the hearts of people to make them do hateful, misguided things, and to utter vile and depraved words. They sit in the pews of churches every Sunday, sometimes stand in the pulpit, too. And many are those who think they are praising God but are in fact working for the other one.
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[via Gawker]
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[via SF Signal]
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This Kony 2012 video stuff that has been going around has been bothering me because the novel I’m currently working on has been using themes from this conflict and from my research the conflict ended in 2006. For a minute, I thought they were saying that the conflict had reignited. I wasn’t sure what to think. This video and the people behind it may have good intentions but ... something is off here.
The most honest day of Jason “Invisible Children” Russell’s life was the day he went crazy on a California street corner. I think (I hope) it may mean that he is coming to grips with the false narrative he has been building in his mind about himself, the church he belongs to, and the work that he has been doing. A person should go crazy when he realizes that his video that distorts the facts in order to create the narrative that he is a superhero “having fun while saving lives” did not work. A person should go crazy if he realizes that he was negating the very institution he was involved with of any responsibility in creating the crisis in the first place. You should go crazy after learning that the Internet works both ways: you can create a message for a large Internet audience AND the large audience can criticize that message using research from the Internet.
Furthermore, the “Kony 2012” campaign negates Uganda’s OWN achievement in negotiating a peace with the LRA in 2006. And further still, the video released was self-aggrandizing in that it made the conflict about Jason Russell and American kids “having fun.” Well, the conflict was not about him or any American. It was about all those who endured the years of cruelty and war in Uganda and, man, did the people of Uganda let them know it.
One of the many disturbing things about working on my current novel has been researching the child soldier situation in Northern Uganda and the Evangelical Christian connection to the conflict. In the books and articles that I’ve read, it seems to me that there is no connection in their minds with their involvement and the atrocities. To the contrary, they see themselves as heroes!! They are not heroes, if that needs to made clear. I know from my own experience how crazy-making that religion can be. I think that the people behind it are (mostly) goodhearted people but lack the objectivity and the self-awareness to see the great harm they have been doing to the world because of their own internalized racism. White skin does not make you a hero. It does not make you a superior person. And it most certainly does not give you license to treat other peoples like children.
There was an interesting discussion on this topic today’s on Democracy Now!
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