Posthuman Blues

What's Happening In Kansas

"Since renouncing their populist saviors in 1896, Kansans have anesthetized themselves against the resulting blight by relentless religious indoctrination. In their curious world Jesus loves everyone except homosexuals and Democrats. Anything that happens is 'God's will,' thus logically absolving everyone from responsibility for their actions, yet somehow there remains a concept called sin, which requires the free will that no one is supposed to own. They believe that their god will protect them against any danger, yet they tremble in constant fear of the ungodly. In a decision that threw their state back a full century in intellectual development, creationist Kansas legislators banned the teaching of evolution a couple of years ago."

I can laugh smugly because I live in Missouri, ten minutes from the Kansas border. But I'm afraid the infection has spread way beyond geographical barriers. The entire Midwest is a vast stew of self-righteous bores.

Even the relatively urbane Country Club Plaza is regularly besieged by religious nuts. For example, a month or so ago I saw a woman lugging a life-size cross down the sidewalk. Nothing new there; Jesus impersonators have long become part of the weekend landscape here.

But this particular cross had actual wheels jutting from the bottom. You know, like airport luggage. As unwitting metaphor, the Cross On Wheels very accurately sums up "What's Happening in Kansas": the unimpeded infantilization of the American mind.

There's a Segway store opening where the boarded-up carcass of F.A.O. Schwartz now stands; will I soon see gyroscopically assisted cross-wielding idiots trucking across town?