And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.”
And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty.
Really. Because I would have thought that poverty was caused by economics and earthquakes were caused by geology. I had wondered, on first hearing this story, whether this was a common belief among deluded religious fucktards, or was it just another of the many vile things Pat Robertson just pulls out of his ass every now and then? Apparently, though, it has a basis in the fundamentalist world's bizarre, twisted excuse for factual reality:
It is a matter of well-documented historical fact that the nation of Haiti was dedicated to Satan 200 years ago. On August 14, 1791, a group of houngans (voodoo priests), led by a former slave houngan named Boukman, made a pact with the Devil at a place called Bois-Caiman. All present vowed to exterminate all of the white Frenchmen on the island. They sacrificed a black pig in a voodoo ritual at which hundreds of slaves drank the pig’s blood. In this ritual, Boukman asked Satan for his help in liberating Haiti from the French. In exchange, the voodoo priests offered to give the country to Satan for 200 years and swore to serve him. On January 1, 1804, the nation of Haiti was born and thus began a new demonic tyranny.
Now let's leave aside for the fact that if this blood sacrifice really ever took place, it wasn't dedicated to Satan (voudon is not a devil-worship cult but is one of the many religions in the world that have nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity), and that even if it was, it wasn't (because Satan, the goat-headed god of goats that Christianity blames for all the evil their god created, does not exist). This is quite illustrative of how Satan is in fact the best friend the church could possibly have, the perfect scapegoat for every failure and malfeasance of their perfect Saviour. It puts me in mind of the story of Job, in which God makes a bet with Satan that his most devoted worshiper would still keep the faith after every possible form of shit had been dumped on top of him.
See, they have no possible explanation as to why, in a universe created and controlled in every possible aspect by a benevolent and loving deity, bad things keep happening to good people. It's inconceivable that they might accept the most obvious possibilities: that their God is a sadistic sociopath, or that shit just happens and the universe doesn't give a ratfuck about you. So they make up all sort of twisted, tortured explanations for things like the string of problems and disasters that have plagued Haiti. There are a few possible paths you can go down here: you can just give in and say you don't know why your God would want to murder and torture people, though you have faith that he has a damn good reason; you can say that natural disasters and things like systemic poverty are some form of test (presumably you pass when, like Job, you continue to praise and worship your abuser until the day he kills you); or, you blame the victims for what common sense would tend to tell you isn't at all their fault. It's common enough to claim that they weren't pious enough, that they harboured gays and liberals and uppity wimmin and therefore deserved death; but this is the first time I've heard it said that the bad luck and bad breaks and unstoppable-force-meets-immovable-object nature of the cosmos has been brought down on their heads because they all were literally a pack of devil-worshipers under contract to the Lord of the Flies.
Of course, it's nothing but a typical Pat Robertson excuse for race-baiting and smug theocratic diarrhea, but it really points up the childishness of religious belief. It's literally the ethics of a child: whatever invisible sky dad says is right, and whatever the bad mens do is wrong. And it's amazing how often what God wants and what racist, patriarchal, privileged fucktards wants just happens to be identical. How dare those uppity negroes rebel against their rightful white, Christian overlords - and celebrate their rebellion with a pagan ceremony, to boot? They's in league with Satan! Spank them, sky daddy!
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