A Whole Other Ballgame

My sports newsgroup has been taken over by political ranting. It's maddening, and not just because when I'm reading there I'd rather read about the pennant race than the Presidential race, damnit.

There's one thing about it that particularly bothers me, though. Not just the vicious factionalism and the screaming and the offtopicness. Not even just the name-games, though this is one of them (I hate name games in rhetoric), but...

There are a couple of folks who go on ranting about "the Obamasiah".

And I keep cringing at the anti-Christian subtext.

And I'm sure the people who are saying this would consider themselves good and proper Christians who are mocking the behaviour of others, but ...

... the others aren't the ones directly conflating a God and a Caesar.

... the others aren't the ones who are directly mocking a major religion's sacred concepts by using them as terms of derision.

... the others aren't treating politics and salvation as one and the same.


It makes me horribly uncomfortable. And I know it's tied into the attempt to dogwhistle the antichrist into the campaign, and I know I'm reacting at some level to that, but...

... mostly I'm just looking at the blatant impiety of it all, the horrible twisting of the process and symbols of religion, and wondering if I'm the crazy one for noticing it.