delicious brains

the other night, i watched jesus camp, which arrived from netflix. later that night, i caught the end of dawn of the dead (the remake, which isn't bad). made for an oddly appropriate double-feature. the former gives you pretty much everything you could ask for in a freaky-bible-thumper movie. there are people speaking in tongues, five minutes into it. you've got your megachurches, you've got your creationism propaganda videos. you've got the freaky rat-tailed kid who resembles bart in that episode of the simpsons where he claims an ability to heal people (except, you know, not funny). for me, the most disturbing part was when they show that little girl walking up to random strangers and trying to convert them. the idea that not only were these kids trained to spout such inane babblings at people but exhorted to bring in everyone they knew wasn't anything new, but the vision of how systematic was was disturbing; i mean, even if half the kids succeed at bringing in just one more person, it still grows pretty fast. and while the things they teach these kids do make them dumber, preparing them poorly for the real world, it makes you wonder about the other, more virulent teachings sometimes associated with these places. westerners always marvel about cultures that glorify things like suicide bombing, and take a patronizing view of such things, but really, when we see these kids indoctrinated into thinking that they're some kind of warriors for jesus, dressed up in camouflage, natch, how far off are we? one hopes that the ignominious end of the bush administration foretells an ebb in these idiots' influence, but there's a lot of 'em. they're loud and they like to complain that they're oppressed. and they, like the walking dead, are hungry for brains.