Summer Bummer

On July 16, 1990 Jesus gave the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to David Allen Bawden, who took the name of Pope Michael

I am closing in on the end my first summer funsie book of the year. What's the Matter With Kansas? by Thomas Frank is a tell all on why conservative America is nutso butso. Because listen these Kansans, they were once radical liberals in the heart of this country. Then something about unions came up and people started fighting for their own rights and God wasn't that big of a deal and then one day someone remembered Him(Her? It? Him.) and while all of these little ladies got together to read the Bible and hate the free market the neo con population multiplied like fruit flies, moved to the Missouri border, made bank, bought land and bought any sort of free thought in Kansas. Get it? I still don't but after reading it I can understand why Ann Coulter got so far with a career based on fear mongering, money making, and fucking the man. Because even if you paint her red and throw her in the middle of Kansas with her "fellow man" do some research and find out that she was one of many neo cons that was wealthy in the womband always had something to bitch about, and oh loved God. There is nothing common about these "common" people, but they're damn tricky and their theories of liberal conspiracy beat anything a liberal arts student can come up with.

Exhibit A:

Anyway this guy David Bawden said fuck all ya'll and called a papal election. In 1990 he delcared himself Pope Michael of Kansas. Why? He denounces scholarship of the clergy, all clergy in general, and most importantly anything that has to do with the Vatican II church, because of course the Vatican II church is rooted in conspiracy, and Pope Michael...well, Pope Michael is rooted in his own studies and what he refers to as his epiphany which is still very fuzzy. Now for the Kansas type zinger: 

His style of argument is one that I have seen used in my lifetime by the extreme left, zealously excommunicating one another and purifying their movement and holding eternal grudges against one another for this or that bit of heresy or thought-error. Pope Michael, though, seems to have derived it from the exact opposite end of the political spectrum. This becomes clear as he attributes more and more events to conspiracy.

Pope Michael claims to have been thrown out of seminary because he knew faith too well and the ones that were not kicked out did not know the faith at all. The sinister purposes of the church (Vatican II style) were revealed by their preferences for said weak minded students. To further prove his point he provides documentation of the moment everything went wrong:

A hymnal from 1959 that includes a line (in incorrect translation from the Latin, him and his mother insist) that was later incorporated in the new mass by Vatican II. They also know someone who was told by a Jesuit in the fifties that the mass would be in English someday. Some people - the liberal elite - were in the know, while the rest just dumbly followed orders.

Yeah he has only about 10 followers, if you will, and he holds mass in the family thrift store, but think of all the little Pope Michaels in this country and tell me something's not goin' on.

Just sayin'

Randi