Rappy Reads Like Lambs to the Slaughter: Chapter 1, Part 2-The He-Man Horseman

Welcome back to peering into the abyss that is Like Lambs to the Slaughter! After some deliberation, I decided it would be most apt to update this series on Wednesdays and Sundays (other than those Wednesdays and Sundays when I’m busy), with my RPG reviews and other topics getting updates on other days only. So, after a first page of content showing a connection to Hal Lindsay and extolling the evils of Smurfs, what does the next entry of chapter 1 hold for us?

“Literally millions of people are involved in a desperate search for spiritual reality, and it seems most of them don’t much care what the source of it is or where they find it just so long as it’s ‘real’. They are sick to death of the dry and empty ritual, the unspeakable hypocrisy, and the suffocating legalism that characterizes so many of our churches today. And yet something deep within them yearns to be filled with the presence of God – not the God of the Bible, whom they have learned to despise and ridicule, but a God more to their own liking and understanding, a God who would just as soon be called ‘Goddess’ or ‘The Universal Energy’, and who promises them unlimited knowledge, power, and even the ultimate fulfillment of personal divinity.”

-Like Lambs to the Slaughter, Chapter 1, pg. 10

Why, the “everyone has a Jesus-shaped hole inside” canard, of course! And on top of that, the canard of “if you aren’t a Real True Christian like our denomination above all others, you must hate God!” Yeah…no, that’s not how it goes. You wanna know how it really goes?

It goes from a childhood of being shovel-fed fundamentalist eschatology to the eventual realization that the boogeymen in the closet and the evil Others are actually just like you. It goes from being treated as a religious affiliation rather than a person but loved for it, to being ostracized once that tribal banner is taken down off its flag pole. It goes from jaw-chattering fright of being left alone without warning due to the thoughts that you might have offended Jesus enough to not be Raptured, to growing up and fighting tooth and nail to attempt to make your mark on the world a more progressive and positive one. It’s not about the deity, Michaelsen, it’s about the people. People like my parents, who I still love in spite of their disdain for my very being. People like my old church of yore, who only recently got around to taking in interracial couples. People like you, who preach hellfire and damnation from children’s fiction as if God is a weak edifice whose ass could be handed to him by Isis and Odin if he doesn’t get enough praise. That is how it goes.

And furthermore, as a fan of researching mythology, including its various deific figures, which goddess are you talking about here? Gaia, the Earth Mother? Pacha Mama, the other Earth Mother? Isis, the bringer of life and magic? Mariaamman, the source of both live-giving rain and death-dealing pestilence? Amaterasu, she who shines from the heavens? Come now, be a bit more specific! Oh, that’s right, they’re all “Others”, so it doesn’t matter much which one you mean, does it?

This becomes especially clear in the next segment of chapter 1. Michaelsen goes on to denigrate “Eastern mysticism” and “the occult” as the Others.

“What was once the squalling infant of the hippie era is growing up fast. The New Age Movement is spreading its roots into every facet of our society. Housewives can’t even get out of their local supermarkets without running the gauntlet of magazines and weekly periodicals heralding the latest information on channelers, psychic healers, gurus, astrologers, etc”

-Like Lambs to the Slaughter, Chapter 1, pg. 11

Okay, so, it’s all the fault of Those Damn Dirty Hippies? The Babylonian astrologers of old, Hindu gurus, occultists of the Victorian era, and plenty of others would disagree with you. What makes this section even more amusing is that Michaelsen manages to get so close to realizing that the “New Age movement” is actually an eclectic holding title for various spiritual movements, only to completely drop the ball with this statement:

“Still, as long as you don’t believe in sin or the basic sin-nature of man, Satan, the virgin birth, the exclusive deity of Christ, heaven or hell, or anything that smacks of Fundamentalist, it’s even okay to be ‘Christian’. The New Age is the ultimate eclectic religion of self.”

-Like Lambs to the Slaughter, Chapter 1, pg. 11

…Okaaaaay. First off, you’re equating Christianity with fundieism. Second, you’re claiming that people that don’t believe in Christ claim to be Christians. Third….no belief in Satan? In “New Age” and occultism? The same occultism that, long ago, drew upon the Ars Goetia and the Dukes and other Rulers of Hell?

Oh, and the whole comments on virgin birth and heaven and hell always being Christian tenets. She must spontaneously combust upon hearing about the Cathars and adoptionist sects.

Leading into the tail part of our first chapter, Michaelsen finally gets into the “seduction of the innocent” portion of the book. And what is the sinister Gay Occult Agenda doing to instill this EBUL FALSITY into our culture (all of the next unlabeled quotes from chapter 1, page 13)?

“Saturday morning cartoons are proving to toddlers that ‘I AM THE POWER!’”

Ahem. That’s “I have the power”.

“They are told that there are ‘good’ sorceresses and Witches and shamans and wizards who have access to untold power”

Yep, they’re taught that now. Just like they were taught by that most evil anti-Christian man of all, J.R.R. Tolkien. Oh wait.

“and that telepathy and telekinesis (and those words are the exact ones used) are normal and useful abilities to cultivate”.

They’re referred to as telepathy and telekinesis because that’s the actual damn terminology. Also, since when have psionic powers been normal in children’s shows? Psions and the like are typically only one member of the Hero Band, villains, or strange Others that exist outside of the main cast.

“In Gifted-and-Talented programs childrens are given projects dealing with Ouijia boards – how to build them and use them, how to read palms, and how to be like ‘amazing Mr. Hughes’, who helps policemen find missing bodies.”

Yes, because my gifted teachers didn’t give us strategy games and science books. They totally gave us novelty pieces of wood with letters on them to fool around with and imagine we could talk to the unquiet dead.

Only they didn’t do that at all.

Furthermore, the hell is with the Amazing Mr. Hughes comment? Is she talking about Howard Hughes? If so, when did seers and ouijia boards get into the picture? Google’s not helping me out on this one. Anyone in the comments who can enlighten me should please do so, as in all of my paranormal studies for my urban fantasy campaign setting you can find up at the top of the page here, I’ve never come across anything about Howard Hughes being a Harry Dresden-esque magical detective. Moving on, though…

“Despite overwhelming documentations of suicides and murders associated with it, Dungeons and Dragons now has a special edition of their ‘game’ especially designs for use in school.”

This section of the chapter had to go there. I’m on this quote like a bulette on a gnome buffet. I know it was the 80s, but really, you brought out the D&D suicide bullshit? That’s not “overwhelmingly documented”, it’s based on flimsy so-so stories equivalent to those blaming video games for school shootings, and has been debunked by far better people than myself.

The chapter ends off with the claim that there is a One World Religion and One World Government coming, and it’s “New Ageism”. Given the stubbornness of Christian nationalists and other fundamentalists of various religions, I somehow doubt we’re getting a One-New-Age-Order from this supposed occult illuminati. This section also has the perfect quote to end on, and one that is a phrase most of you fundy-bloggers have seen before.

“I believe we are living in the end times.”

-Like Lambs to the Slaughter, Chapter 1, pg. 14

End Times indeed. You fear that He-Man Horseman and the plagues of Smurfollyon. Meanwhile, here on the brink of 2012, we’re still doing pretty good on having a world divided by hatred rather than together by love, much less into a singular world government.

Next time, we’ll be entering Chapter 2: The Humanist Conspiracy. Be afraid, be very very afraid (and befuddled).