The End....at last?

The End…at last?

(this is one of my rare extemporaneous pieces)

So olde Fred Phelps is dead, and high time too I suppose.  He was a hurtful and hate-filled man that preached his twisted version of…well, I can’t even figure out what his starting point was…to all and sundry. The droll, ironic side of me says, “Isn’t it great, you just know his funeral is to be picketed by…well, anyone with a conscience and a heart. But the human side of me doesn’t find that all so amusing, as much as I would like to. You see, I think things like that are what keep things like that going.

This is no way an apology or worse yet, absolution, (remember, I used to be Catholic!) for all of his heinous activities. But let’s face it, the reason the Fred Phelps of the world can exist is because someone, and in this case a lot of “someones” want to hear that particular form of bilge water. It’s been a pattern all through history. And if you can further your own hateful agenda by couching it, however tenuously…in something familiar, all the easier to sell it. And therein lies the problem;

Anti-Semitism didn’t die with the fall of the Nazis, (indeed…it seems to be on the rise again), racism didn’t end with The Emancipation Proclamation or Brown vs. Board of Education, or The Voting Rights Act, and Women’s Suffrage did very little to level the playing field.  Alas sometimes, the message remains after the messenger has gone away. So Fred Phelps is dead, we will hear his hate no longer. But unfortunately, he has left behind his own believers, and that is what we have left to deal with, they are who has to be reached.

May peace come to us all, now and for all times.

Glenn