Just say Noah

The previous post on the subject of homophobia--the pathological fear of gay cooties that might infect an otherwise sober-living person at any time--got me to thinking back on the subject of an earlier post concerning that strange version of Islamophobia in which the victim imagines that he or she is being somehow swallowed or enveloped by a foreign legal system, the so-called Sharia.

The trope of mental illness works here, too, as explanation for that sense of the code as not a code but something hideously physical, like a wave of slime lapping at your feet and then climbing, climbing, sort of itching and stinging and approaching your ankles, and you want to scream but.... Etc.

The nightmare quality, in which you can't be sure you won't find yourself suddenly in a Baghdad public square, strapped into a suicide vest whose detonation is under someone else's control, and it's all because of something Obama did, is why it is a waste of time to sit down and tell people that they don't have to worry. Nightmare is what it is all about, and it is not subject to rational discussion.

In the meantime, though, I have run across some evidence that it is possible for our country to be secretly taken over by a religious legal code, and that it may have happened already--in 1991! And by something a lot more haimish than Sharia, too...[see below the jump]

Image (mis)appropriated from Yeshuist Rabbi Matt of Seattle, who may not appreciate Levitical levity. The dysperspective is probably just Photoshop, but doesn't it have a haunting Caligari quality?

Scots, wha hae wi' Reagan bled: Important update

Seems likely at this point that I am going to lose my bet on that payroll tax holiday extension bill: contemplating the possibility of some of them voting one way and some of them voting another, the Republican caucus shuddered and joined ranks to vote it down--sort of. Actually, knowing how the House likes to be positive, Boehner gave them something to vote for--half a committee which will negotiate with the other, senatorial half if it ever comes to exist (the senators are out of town until January) over the poisoned bill they did manage to pass some weeks ago. So you and I will be losing that 40 bucks or so from our next paychecks, doctors will be losing a lot more, to the point where they will have to send new Medicare patients away (to the emergency room? that should save the country tons of money!), and thousands of people who have no jobs because of John Boehner will lose the unemployment insurance checks (that's insurance, for which they, and we, have already paid the premiums) that they depend on to have any cash at all. But hey, Boehner has proven (to himself, I guess, not likely to anyone else), that he is a Real Leader.  Don't start thinking about Tomorrow!

One of the sheep in the video looks as if she is wearing a fabulous barrister's wig.

Update, later that morning:


From the once and future Speaker, Nancy Pelosi herself, via Jed Lewison at Daily Kos: Speaker Pro Tempore Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) flees the room as if his chastity were being threatened when Steny Hoyer asks to speak about voting on the payroll tax holiday extension. These guys really don't want to vote.