F.U.B.A.R.: America's Right-Wing Nightmare

By Sam Seder, Stephen Sherrill and Janeane Garofalo

The United States has survived clueless presidential administrations before. But no matter how enormous the crisis -- the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate, Monica Lewinsky's thong -- America's always come out looking like, well, America.

This time, however, something's different. Things aren't just screwed up; they're f!$d up beyond all recognition. Wel-come to F.U.B.A.R., a hilarious and scathing satire of the American Right's bad behavior, by the creators of Air America's Majority Report.

If you're a liberal who's somehow not panicked over the state of our Union, or if you're a Republican who's just having voter's remorse, or if you think what's happening to the country is just politics as usual, F.U.B.A.R. will open your eyes to our current national nightmare. With completely unfair and unbalanced analysis, authors Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill take readers on a whirlwind tour of what's left of the United States, exposing the truth about the Right's blueprint for total domination -- over your money, your mind, your sex life, and even your place in the afterlife (yes, they have a plan for that, too).

Along the way, they'll answer your most pressing questions, like:

• I'm gay. Can I still be a Republican?

• Do I need to own my own congressman, or is a time share okay?

• Is New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman's mustache, in fact, the sign of the Beast?

• I thought we ran the media. What happened?

Finally, Seder and Sherrill offer a helpful and hopeful vision for a future that remarkably doesn't look like a cross between the Matrix and Mayberry. F.U.B.A.R. is the wake-up call America has been waiting to receive -- and it will probably be wiretapped.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061863646

Sam Seder

Sam Seder is the cohost, with Janeane Garofalo, of the Air America radio network's Majority Report. A New York-based writer, director, and actor, Seder served with distinction as an intern on Capitol Hill, where he was once caught urinating on the IMF seal.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

F.U.B.A.R. is a military acronym that means FUCKED UP BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION. It is the authors’ contention that the country has been fucked up. But more than just the general boy, things are really fucked up feeling that most Americans have when watching the news or rolling their eyes at the more-‘partisan-bickering’-by-those-Washington-politicians tone the media takes with any story about politics.

This is a different kind of fucked up—one that’s making America unrecognizable as the America most Americans feel they know. You may think the political and social situation in this country is bad. But it’s worse. It’s the Rapture Right Paradox: to whatever extent you realize Bush and the Rapture Right have fucked America up, it’s always worse. However worse you think it is, it’s worser. So far, scientists have been unable to come up with a successful mathematical proof of the Rapture Right Paradox, but then the Rapture Right isn’t so big on science.

How have they been able to fuck things up so badly? It’s sort of like those parasites who eat their host from the inside without the host even knowing—keeping them alive for as long as possible. Everything looks normal until the host is no longer needed, and then, poof—it all crumbles. They depend on you being, essentially, asleep and unaware of what’s going on.

Sure, you’ve been up, walking around, spending money, eating stuff, signing for packages, lifting babies, handling glass things, grilling meats; but you’ve been asleep.

Maybe it was Bill Clinton who put you to sleep. Maybe it was a good run of a tech stock. Maybe it was the media’s obsession with missing white women. Maybe it was the job, the kids, Ben and Jen or Jen and Brad. Maybe it was the arrivé of the Beaujolais nouveau. Maybe you follow politics, maybe you’re liberal or independent or Democrat or fiscally responsible or progressive or intelligent—probably most of these things. But you’ve been asleep.

Nothing to be ashamed of. We realize people have lives to lead, families to take care of. And sometimes it’s easier to just go along, and not want to know too much about what’s going on. We have these tendencies, too—we’re both meat-eaters, for example, though suspect we wouldn’t be if we delved too deeply into how that hamburger wound up on our plate at the Corner Bistro.

But, you say, I know the country is having a tough time, I know the Bush administration is corrupt, I know about Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, I know about the lies before the war started and the lies after the war started, I know about the trillion-dollar Iraq War bill my grandkids will have to pay, I know about the huge deficits, the wage stagnation, the hackery and incompetence exposed by Katrina, the secret NSA domestic spying with no court order.

But that’s not all the right wing is doing. They’re not just trying to reshape the political landscape of the country; they’re trying to redefine things like reality and truth. They’ll take the former where they can get it (and they’ve gotten a lot of it during the last five years), but it’s the latter where the chance for big, wholesale change is.

That’s why, as you’ll notice, we use the terms Bush, Republicans, and Rapture Right interchangeably. What was once the fringe—the embarrassing cousin they saw only when they had to (special occasions, especially the ones held every four years in November)—has now become the heart of the Republican Party. They’ve finally got the real power, and, like Bush with the phantom political capital he claimed to have earned after the 2004 election, they intend to use it.

So, while Bush chips away at the outside, the Rapture Right chips away at the foundation. A little bit of doubt about the truth of evolution here, a little bit of social security lies there, a little bit of fear about homosexuals everywhere, and pretty soon the country’s all fucked up.

Among other things,*F.U.B.A.R. serves as an attempt to show you how they’re doing this, wake you up to the nightmare that is Rapture Right America, and give you a few pointers about how to live more comfortably in the New America.

To those out there who may feel they’re not ready to experience the full awakening, we’ve thought of you, too. For you we’ve included a lot of fun puzzles and games that you can skip to if you’d rather not see what’s going on. They can be found at the end of the book—so if you choose to avail yourself of this option, you, too, can feel like you’ve finished the book.

But we hope the rest of you will press on. If you don’t, then the Rapture Right has won. We’re fighting them here so you don’t have to fight them…oh well…

1 . TALIBAN DREAMIN’

THE BAD NEWS IS THERE’S NO GOOD NEWS

You may have noticed that under the Bush regime the line between church and state has gotten a bit blurry. Maybe you’ve heard about a Ten Commandment controversy here or an attorney general anointing himself with cooking oil there.* Perhaps you know that over the past five years your government has given more than a billion dollars of your tax money to tax-exempt churches for faith-based initiatives ( aka pay-Yahweh-ola). Perhaps you’ve been following the brouhaha over trying to change the Constitution so that gay people can’t get married. But hey, no biggie, they’re doing their thing, I’m doing mine.

The problem is that your thing is their thing. The Republican Party isn’t the charming, noblesse-oblige, country-club avuncular-drunk Grand Old Party of yesteryear. There’s a new sheriff in GOP town. One who believes we’re living in end times. This one is lighter on the charm and heavier on the apocalypse. He’s a Rapture Republican, a Big Government Theocrat, a Radical Cleric—an American Taliban.

If you’re reading this book, chances are you’re a thoughtful, curious person. In our new future under Rapture Republican rule, you may want to think about dialing that kind of thing down a bit. When in public, stick to simple declarative sentences, like, Hey, that’s tall! or "According to Jim was awesome last night!" If the world looks flat from where you are, it’s flat.

As far as reading in particular, scale back quickly (after, of course, you finish reading this book). If you feel like you absolutely must continue reading, pick up a People or Us Weekly (Time and Newsweek work just as well). Nothing will make you more docile than having your head filled with the details of Nick and Jessica’s divorce or whether it’s Hilary or Lindsay who’s being the jerk about the whole thing.*

RETURN TO THE WORLD THAT NEVER WAS

Sure the Rapture Right has always been around, but the new reality is that Washington—and statehouses and school boards and newsrooms around the country—are flooded with them. What was once funny† is no longer so funny. Ever wonder why you don’t hear much about the Christian Coalition or the Moral Majority anymore? Well, they’ve changed their names—now they’re just called Republicans. Here’s Hanna Rosin writing in the Washington Post in March 2005:

This year evangelicals in public office have finally become so numerous that they’ve blended in to the permanent Washington backdrop, a new establishment that has absorbed the local habits and mores…

And a lot of them have already absorbed the local habits and mores of Capitol Hill:

…Nearly every third congressional office stocks an ambitious Christian leader who calls himself evangelical, according to Jim Guth, a political science professor at Furman University.*

Coral Ridge Ministries boasts a weekly television show and a daily radio show broadcast to millions. The following was written by its former executive director George Grant.† It’s basically the mission statement of the Rapture Right:

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ—to have dominion in the civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less. If Jesus Christ is indeed Lord, as the Bible says, and if our commission is to bring the land into subjection to His Lordship, as the Bible says, then all our activities, all our witnessing, all our preaching, all our craftsmanship, all our stewardship, and all our political action will aim at nothing short of that sacred purpose. Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land—of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute the authority of God’s Word as supreme over all judgments, over all legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and confederations.*

Why should they have dominion over all the creatures of the Earth? Because that’s what it says in the Bible: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth (Genesis 1:26). There thou hath it: if thou creepeth, lo, do they hath dominion over thee!

They want it all. And it’s not just geographic dominion. While the press has reasonably been distracted with the right’s attempt at dominion over the Middle East, they’ve set about locking up dominion over the homefront—over sex, religion, your finances (which is to say, your future), and over science. Those are what we’re going to focus on, and not just because we don’t want to go to Iraq.†

It’s the last of those—science—that we’ll start with. Because it’s really a battle over truth itself, and they realize that if they can win that, then their domino theory may work after all.

2 . OPEN YOUR MIND

In a child’s ability to master the multiplication table, there is more holiness than all your shouted hosannas and holy holies. An idea is more important than a monument, and the advancement of Man’s knowledge more miraculous than all the sticks turned to snakes and the parting of the waters.

—Inherit the Wind

Turns out, an idea is not just more important than a monument, it’s more important than a fact.

Intelligent design is the new smart bomb of the religious right. It may not be science, but it’s still brilliant. For a long time, religion and science coexisted pretty well. There was that dustup with Galileo, and the Scopes glitch, but, for the most part, science was science, religion was religion.

The genius of the intelligent-design concept, though, is how it uses the principles of enlightenment and progressivism to destroy…enlightenment and progressivism.

And that’s because with the new version, Intelligent Design 2.0, all its proponents are asking for is open-mindedness, to have a debate, to consider all sides. Science is hard stuff—that’s why you usually need a Ph.D. to be a scientist. But the intelligent-design crowd has been able to turn that into a plus, by conflating complexity with contradiction. And all they’re asking is for schools to present both sides.

As Senator Rick Santorum told the Washington Post on March 14, 2005, My reading of the science is there’s a legitimate debate. My feeling is let the debate be had.

One might argue that we had that debate. Most notably, in the seventeenth century. And later there was even a whole play about it. Or you may have thought the new debate over the debate was settled in November 2005, when members of a local school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, were voted out over their requirement that intelligent design be taught in the classroom, and the subsequent decision by a federal judge that ruled the requirement unconstitutional. Just a small bump in the road for intelligent design. They’ve been waiting a few hundred years for this, and a few liberal jerk-offs in Dover, Pennsylvania, won’t stop them.

In fact, in March 2005, a statewide law was proposed in Pennsylvania:

House Bill 1007:

Section 1516.2. Teaching Theories on the Origin of Man and Earth.—(a) In any public school instruction concerning the theories of the origin of man and the earth which includes the theory commonly known as evolution, a board of school directors may include, as a portion of such instruction, the theory of intelligent design. Upon approval of the board of school directors, any teacher may use supporting evidence deemed necessary for instruction on the theory of intelligent design.

And various intelligent-design alternatives are currently being considered in thirty states.*

As Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science Education told the Washington Post, The energy level is new. The religious right had an effect nationally [in the election]. Now, by golly, they want to call in the chits.

And they are, pushed by groups like the Discovery Institute, which bills itself as a nonpartisan public policy think tank conducting research on technology, science and culture, economics and foreign affairs, but which spends more than $1 million a year promoting intelligent design.*

In the summer of 2005, President Bush himself said: Both sides ought to be properly taught…so people can understand what the debate is about.

Some thought the debate was at least settled within the Catholic Church, which had seemed to make its peace with Darwin. Pope John Paul II had declared in 1992 that the whole Galileo thing was a tragic mutual incomprehension, and in 1996 said that evolution was more than just a hypothesis.

Not so fast. In a July 2005 New York Times op-ed piece, the influential Austrian cardinal Christoph Schoenhorn dismissed John Paul’s statement as rather vague and unimportant, and said that evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense (whatever that neo means) is not true.

Then, in November, Pope Benedict XVI, expressing solidarity with his American counterpart in the White House, quoted Saint Basil the Great, a fourth-century saint who warned about those fooled by the atheism that they carry inside of them, imagine a universe free of direction and order, as if at the mercy of chance.

And if that’s not clear enough, Benedict clarified:

How many of these people are there today? These people, fooled by atheism, believe and try to demonstrate that it’s scientific to think that everything is free of direction and order…

With the sacred Scripture, the Lord awakens the reason that sleeps and tells us: In the beginning, there was the creative word. In the beginning, the creative word—this word that created everything and created this intelligent project that is the cosmos—is also love.

Intelligent project? Hmmm. That sounds familiar.

And, of course, there’s Kansas. Always Kansas. On the same day as the vote in Dover took place, the statewide Kansas Board of Education voted six to four to include challenges to Darwin in school curricula.

But again, it was just because they agreed with the liberal principles of open-mindedness. Kenneth Willard, a board member who supported the changes, accused the scientific establishment of having a blind faith in evolution and a high degree of fear of change. Steve Abrams, the board chairman, said the changes simply meant more science would be taught.

They know the history of Kansas and evolution, and they know the changes were late-night-monologue-joke magnets. But look how carefully the changes are worded. It’s all about the full range of views:

Regarding the scientific theory of biological evolution, the curriculum standards call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory.

These curriculum standards reflect the Board’s objective of:

1) to help students understand the full range of scientific views that exist on this topic.

2) to enhance critical thinking and the understanding of the scientific method by encouraging students to study different and opposing scientific evidence.

3) to ensure that science education in our state is secular, neutral, and non-ideological.*

Notice that last bit. See? This is secular. It’s not about God…per se, just something,

Reviews for F.U.B.A.R.

[markberonte · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This time, however, something's different. Things aren't just screwed up; they're f&#!$d up beyond all recognition. Wel-come to F.U.B.A.R., a hilarious and scathing satire of the American Right's bad behavior, by the creators of Air America's Majority Report.If you're a liberal who's somehow not panicked over the state of our Union, or if you're a Republican who's just having voter's remorse, or if you think what's happening to the country is just politics as usual, F.U.B.A.R. will open your eyes to our current national nightmare. With completely unfair and unbalanced analysis, authors Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill take readers on a whirlwind tour of what's left of the United States, exposing the truth about the Right's blueprint for total domination -- over your money, your mind, your sex life, and even your place in the afterlife (yes, they have a plan for that, too).