Dr. Woody'z Fabulous, Fascinating Factoids: Pious Pin-headed Preachers.

With all the fabled folderol of Thanksgiving on the horizon, these days you cannot swing a cat without bumping up against the despicable revisionist "history" propogated by the pious pinheads of the Wackloon/Fundie/Cristo-Right. David Barton, anyone? 

The charlatans are EVERYWHERE. The latest to join the fray was that pious pinhead, the AFA's Tony Perkins, who was out last week, in advance of the 'seasonal remembrances' spreading the falsehoods about the "religious" origins of the USofA, and of the colonists fleeing oppression, seeking 'freedom' in the New World. Perkins claimed that the Puritans' departure from Europe to seek 'religious freedom' presages and authorizes their contemporary "right" to deny birth-control to the population in general because it offends THEIR principles..

No, I'm NOT making that up. I've left the link in the comments below.

The story of the Puritans is one of the most cherished, and most abused, myths of the Colonial era.. 

Even though the lies are embeded in the national "exceptionality" narrative, somebody needs to instruct the these holy dickwads and fuckwitted, cretinous "preachers" that only a tiny fraction of the earliest colonists came for "religious freedom." 

Of the original 10 colonies, only those in "New England" were founded by Puritan religious zealots. The vast majority of the REST of the colonists came for the chance to make a buck/pound/guilder by exploiting the "New World." They were a population, in the words of a contemporary observer, of Murtherers, Theeves, Adulterers, [and] idle persons.” Such a description, indeed, fir the vast MAJORITY of our "first citizens."

And those religious zealots--the Pilgrims--left Europe only because it afforded them the opportunity to practice religious EXCLUSIONISM. The Puritans could NOT abide living in communities with those who were NOT of their particular, primitive, fundamentalist persuasion. They expelled those whom they couls, and fled from the rest.

They were self-exiled from Britain, settled in "Holland," where they were deemed too reactionary even for the tolerant Dutch, and were forced to migrate to the New World--- where, everyone profoundly hoped, they would just die out.

The "religious" history of the colonies is a part and parcel of the same "exceptionalist" propaganda which has polluted our national discourse for more than 200 years. So, let's just be clear, here. "Religion" provided only the slightest impetus to the colonization of the East Coast, outside Massachusetts and Connecticut. And it is fundamentally dishonest to pretend otherwise.

TBGO: I Spy, with My Little Eye...

Woody notez that a lotta folks all around the world seem to think Prez. LowBarry's spying and intel-gathering and surveillance activities have been especially egregious and excessive.
Codwswallop. Balderdash. Poppycock! They're NOT.

They are perfectly proportional to the need and the ability of the US State to protect itself via information gathering. No world power could even contemplate participation in global politics without EXTENSIVE, COMPREHENSIVE, and RELIABLE intelligence, both foreign and domestic.
EVERY previous regime in the 20th Century, at least, has extended its intelligence tentacles as far as they were technologically and financially able.
They'd have been criticized, pilloried, and probably fired if they HADN'T.
The reach under Prez LowBarry's regime has perhaps been greater than hitherto, but if previous regimes were less intrusive, it was NOT for lack of trying. I know. I was in the USAF branch of the NSA in the '60s.
And it is NOT going to stop!~
There will be NO diminution intelligence gathering, no interference, no reduction. Nagahapun. Not now, not ever. In the world or "real-politik," it CANNOT be ANY other way.
No matter what ANY pol asserts, declares, or promises, it will continue and increase.
Somebody may throw a modest legislative wrap over the naked acts of surveillance--see, e.g., the Church Committee.
But they will NEVER act to interfere in ANY meaningful way. There will be no budgetary restrictions, no "ethical" ("ethical Intel" = world-class oxymoron) restrictions, no end to it, in absolute certainty!
Anything anybody--President, pope, your sainted mither--says otherwise is just a coverup and a lie.
Business will go on as usual.
And it's "Big Business" now.
Nobody fucks with business if it's big enough. With 20+ Govt bureaus devoted entirely to intel-gathering and analysis, and over 2000 PRIVATE 'security contractors' on the job, with budgets in the trillions, it's too big to stop or to fail.
Seemingly forgotten in the current contretemps is the fact USer 'regimes" have been carrying out varieties of peaceful and violent of counter-intel on USer citizens since the 1880s.
They typically spied then "only" on 'dissidents' like labor (Wobblies) or civil rights activists, anarchists, immigrants, colored people, and students. They were often vicious, violent, and bloody: Ask, for example, the Black Panthers, or, before them, the Molly Maguires.
One notices, with some irony, that people's tolerances for "govt. surveillance" were a lot HIGHER when (1) they didn't think themselves as possible targets for it, and (2) when the guy running the show was white.