This whole rape can’t cause pregnancy thing has me thinking abou the tentacles of this current of “God will protect us from ourselves” mentality of the right wing (both the political and the theological).  The notion that God won’t let pregnancies happen from rape is a form of this.  The “free market fundamentalism” is a form of this (and also,  not coinicidentally,  a very convenient justification/”have at it”  kind of attitude to “let it all hang out” and it will all come out  in the wash.  Consequences are but “collateral damage” in light of the “greater good for everybody” (“everybody” here is simply code for the ones considered as somebodies,  as opposed to those who don’t count).  And then there’s the environment and global climate change.  Same deal.  I wrote a blog post last week lambasting this attitiude as put forth so clearly in a WIRED article trying to knock down climate change and lumping it with a history of other things that “didn’t happen”.  I

I have heard people use this same line of thinking regarding our financial issues in the United States.  We even made it out of the depression.  The bottom didn’t fall out.  we worked it out”.  But what happpens when the political will to “work it out” is just not there?  What happens when the power of those who like their situation becomes so great that they have the effectual power to prevent the measures of those who ARE ACTUALLY trying  to work it out with REAL SOLUTIONS?  At  least some ACTUAL attempts at solutions?  The RW (and thier oligarchic backers)  would have us stop all this “class warfare” of “accusations” and “unite  the country” like it was “back when Jefferson was a fundamentalist Christian” (courtesy David Barton)

This is a serious problem of casting God as a cosmic fall-back to prevent us from destroyiing ourselves.  If all this bad shit can’t possibly happen,  then what is one to think of the Holocaust?  (that’s the most obvious caveat to this).  But this is rampant in our politics now.  I am reminded of Jeremiah’s warning to the religious leaders of his day.  He warned them not to take refuge  in “We are the People of the Lord,  the People of the Lord,  the People of the Lord”  (you can just hear the sarcastic tone he must have used to say this dripping from repitition of the phrase).  Being God’s people does not shield from consequences.  Becuase if you think it does,  then you are even more likely to suffer the consequences of that.