This is a short and simple letter-to-the-editor. It appears in the News-Gazette of Champaign, Illinois, and it doesn’t look like they have a comments feature. The letter is titled Our society has been poisoned.
Because the writer isn’t a politician, preacher, or other public figure, we won’t embarrass or promote her by using her full name. Her first name is Deanna. Excerpts from her letter will be enhanced with our Curmudgeonly commentary, some bold font for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]. Here we go!
Christians are keepers of the well of a society. [So true!] The well has been poisoned [Gasp!], poisoned by men and women unfaithful to their marriage vows, modeling at home how not to love one another.
How horrible! Deanna says:
Poisoned by evolution [Oh no!]; human life is no longer sacred. Parents abdicating their roles as primary teachers of what children are taught.
It’s a nightmare! After that she tells us:
Enter abortion, the quick fix. Now young people can make up their own minds to what sex they are.
Egad! She continues:
Marriage is the mark of a civilized society. [Yes!] Led by liars to be ignorant of those tenants [sic] of a free society, we are detached from the head (God). We devolve into a tribal society.
What can be done? Deanna gives us the answer:
Return to God, honor your vows to God, marriage and the Constitution of the United States. “Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.”
That’s great advice! But wait — she ends her letter with one more piece of advice:
At least, vote (Republican) and God may yet grant us his grace.
*Groan* Well, dear reader, that’s all we could find this morning. Make of it what you will.
Copyright © 2018. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Complaining about liars, unfaithful to marriage vows, etc.
And she suggests voting republican.
Yeah, thank heavens I was using a cheap solid-state irony detector, and not my audiophile tube model.
How about state congressman Mike Shea of Spokane area, and his “Biblical Basis for War manifesto which says that everyone must accept Biblical law and if they don’t “kill all the males.”
Numerous corporate donors are demanding their campaign contributions back! That’s gotta hurt! Is that crazy enough for you Curmy?
Apparently Deanna’s nom de guerre is “Sadorus”, which sounds about right ‘cause there doesn’t seem to be a lot of joy in Deanna’s life.
Eh. Oh. Apparently Sadorus is where Deanna lives. Still, it does sound remarkably apt.
“Marriage is the mark of a civilized society.”
Then why oppose marriage equality?
Why use your own brain, when someone else can do your thinking for you?
Show people how to destroy their own power of reason and some will eagerly finish the job on their own!
“human life is no longer sacred” Define sacred dearie. IS that sacred as in holy, miraculous, magical and supernatural or sacred as in valuable, meaningful, intelligent and caring? Because the one isn’t anything like the other as far as I can tell. For some reason I think you think sacred refers to the first set of adjectives. Which of course is your problem.
Inspired by Deanna’s evident love of colorful metaphors and malapropisms, I’ve penned my own response:
Christians are the sacred keepers of the well of cliches, but the well is running dry through constant overuse. Men and women are life modeling at home rather than in art schools, where it more properly belongs. The children aren’t really sure they want to draw Mom or Dad naked.
Enter abortion. Realizing it’s not welcome, abortion hurriedly departs. The tenants of a free society are vacating because the landlord detached the shower head of God, and we all devolved back into the tribe from whence we came, whacking out primitive rhythms on logs, and chucking spears at one another.
Oh, and vote Republican.
I don’t suppose it would make any sense to Deanna at all that all her complaints echo those from all societies whatsoever, and can be found in the earliest texts known, going back to ancient Sumer and Egypt, and certainly in the Bible. The people who make them are really deploring the fact that they live in a human society at all. To understand that, Deanna would have to know something about history, or to have actually read the Bible. She doesn’t, and hasn’t, and it isn’t half obvious.
“Now young people can make up their own minds to what sex they are.”
That weak, impotent lament really is the strongest argument bigots have against transexuals.
And young people aren’t allowed to decide on what is to be taught in science classes. And history classes, too.
“Return to God, honor your vows to God, marriage and the Constitution of the United States.”
Tsssk. Deanna only recognizes one society with christian keepers. At second thought, if christians are to be like Deanna, that’s still one society too much.
“Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.” Clearly, Deanna hasn’t read the Constitution either.
The Hebrew doesn’t say “the Lord”, it says YHWH. So is this verse monotheistic or merely henotheistic? (I know nothing about the dating and composition of the early Psalms)
@Paul Braternan
What little I’ve read about the dating of the Psalms gives me the impression that it is a difficult problem. Aside from those who think that the inscriptons (of the sort “A Psalm of so-and-so on such-and-such an occasion”) are reliable, there seems to be no consensus on most individual psalms.
As always, I’d like to get better information.
@TomS, I’m sure there’s a lot known about this. Obviously over a long time period. Psalm 137 is set in Babylon in exile, but 126 speaks of the return. 126 is part of the group called (KJV) Song of Degrees (or Ascents), some of which are labelled “to” David or Slomon, though that could hardly be taken seriously as authorship. Scholars distinguish between pre- and post-exile Biblical Hebrew. My own Hebrew isn’t good enough to diagnose, but I’m sure it’s been done.
Deanna says: “Poisoned by evolution …”
Amazingly she left off poisoned by all of the following (and more): the oblate spheroid earth, heliocentrism, leprosy can’t be washed off of walls, disease isn’t caused by demons, magic does not work, people do not turn into salt pillars, there was no world-wide flood, 4.55B year old Earth, etc. The full list is nearly endless, especially if you take into account the different interpretations of the more than 45K different bible based sects alone (ignoring all other religions).
Human life was supposedly “sacred” during the Crusades, too, which didn’t stop good a-God-a-fearin’ Crusaders from stabbing pregnant women to death (not to mention babies already born, children, and of course men and non-pregnant women). And all this before anyone had ever heard of evolution.