How about a little fire, Scarecrow?

"[L]et me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I wasn't going to bring this subject up again so soon after the last post. But the sometimes random tendencies of the thought process led me back to it. I was thinking of how unfortunate it is that there are so few Republican comedians who are funny, and it sort of brought me to a man I've not thought of in almost two decades.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a young boy with a mullet that Billy Ray Cyrus would envy, I regularly attended the youth group at my church. We did quite a lot of things together, from summer camp to concerts. And one concert was a sold-out performance at a rather respectably-sized venue by a Christian comedian named Mike Warnke. His material wasn't worth writing home about (the only joke I can remember now is one about the duty of ushers being "ushing"). I can't go so far as to say I think it was bad; it was just quite unmemorable. But he was pretty hot stuff among evangelical Christians at the time, many of whom, unfortunately, insulate themselves from the rest of the world just as badly as they do today. (I've not abandoned the core of what I believed then, but tried to dispense with many of the trappings, particularly traditions that have no basis in the teachings of Jesus. Secular rock music is not evil, for example, because something as transcendentally great as the guitar solo in "You Shook Me All Night Long" is proof positive that there is more to existence than what is readily apparent.)

Warnke's big draw was that he had been a former high priest in a satanic cult in the 1960s, and he was saved while serving an especially eventful tour in Vietnam. He told unimpressive jokes, but also warned about the evil ways into which he'd been drawn as a young adult. He was accepted as an expert in the field, and there was an unhealthy fear of satanic cults around that time (and not just among Christians, either), so he got quite a bit of work, and raised quite a bit of money for his outreach programs. His discussions were disturbing, to say the least. One detail that stands out was his description of being called in to consult for local law enforcement when they found a dead baby, who'd been ritually sacrificed and had his skull removed from his head, that was found in a garbage bag. I believe his exact phrase was, "You don't know how evil these people can be until you've looked into the face of a dead infant that is flattened because there's no skull to support it."

For almost a month, I had trouble sleeping. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the image in my mind. I re-developed a fear of dark places that I'd grown out of years earlier. More, I lived in constant terror of the devil and his earthly servants, who constantly, I thought, watched for the slightest infraction against God's commands, waiting impatiently to tear us limb from limb and use our corpses in their depraved rituals.

I really wonder now if I blocked it completely out of my head. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, about a month or so afterwards, I simply didn't think of it at all, even as traumatic as it had been, until yesterday.

I'll admit, as an adult, and particularly as a parent, the idea of a mutilated baby corpse is still one hell of a disturbing mental image. But I've grown up. Yes, I still collect G.I.Joe figures and watch cartoons, but I'm mostly an adult. I no longer believe in the devil as an actual being, only as an abstract representation of our own dark sides, and I recognize the "hellfire and brimstone" sermon for what it is: a form of terrorism.

I can hear the response now: "What?!? How dare you use that word?" The simple fact is, Mirriam-Webster defines terrorism as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion." And what is terror? It is fear. As in fear tactics. Coerce? Again, from Mirriam-Webster: "to achieve by force or threat." So, he was using fear, or terror, of such a supernatural evil to coerce people into believing. And, well, it worked. He might not have been blowing up people on a large scale (or period), but it's the same basic tactic on a much smaller, more personal, scale.

(I'm not saying this to diminish the destruction or loss of life committed by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, nor would I ever condone this sort of behavior. It's evil, pure and simple. But the terrorist modus operandi, using fear to influence others to acquiese to your wishes, is a technique in the toolbox of men like Mike Warnke and Dick Cheney, even if they don't resort to actual violence. Well, except when Cheney is supposedly hunting ducks.)

The first thing to cross my adult mind was skepticism. If there was really a large satanic cult stealing the skulls from infants in the 1980s, why was this the only time I'd heard of it? I follow the news, and have seen quite a few shocking stories of violence, but never anything like this before or since. And why, if he himself had been involved in human sacrifice, as he'd claimed, had he never turned himself or his conspirators in?

Thank God for the internet. Barely a few seconds of typing led me to many sources that informed me that this man had been soundly debunked in 1991 by a Christian magazine called Cornerstone. Turns out pretty much everything he said was total BS. Not only was he a fraud, having been a shy nerd in college and not a drug-addicted satanic murderer, but he'd co-opted other people's stories from Vietnam to make his own stint there sound more dramatic. He'd collected donations for outreach programs that didn't even exist (while drawing a salary in a tax bracket sure to require him to pay more taxes under Obama). He'd also been married four times, and physically abused his wives. In short, he lied and wasn't practicing what he preached. (Hmm.... This is making me think of that one Islamic fundamentalist who talks about the US being evil, but still wears a Rolex. Maybe the terrorism remark is more apropos than I originally thought.)

Instilling fear is never an appropriate course of action for civilized people, regardless of their religion. It doesn't matter what the desired outcome may be. A wise green man once said, in his final film appearance that was worth watching, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." We can learn a lot from Yoda (up through 1999, at least--after that, it's just silliness); as a commentator on the human condition, he never steers you wrong, even if he isn't a human and he doesn't really exist. Fear will lead to suffering every time, be it directly or indirectly, intentional or not. Can we ever trust the words of a man who claims to be working to save souls by scaring children? He may have succeeded in getting me to walk what he thought a straight line for a while, but is it worth traumatizing a 12-year-old kid? Has he ultimately done more harm than good, with his public humiliation destroying his credibility? How many now feel bullied into believing in God and reject what they once accepted as a result of this sort of preaching?

Fear is paralyzing. Anyone who's ever been afraid of the monster under the bed knows this. Fear on a spiritual level keeps one from growing. And spiritual growth is essential, or one is just an automaton of sorts, following commands without ever pondering them.

And, I suppose, it eventually comes back to politics, with the campaign of a once noble and respectable leader lately resorting to playing on fears of a terrorist boogieman who either will kill us all if we vote for the other guy, or who the other guy is secretly pallin' around with. By using fear as a weapon, he becomes what he is trying to scare us against. It's sad and disgusting, and yet pitiful, that McCain, a man I would've without hesitation voted for over Gore in 2000, has sunk to such a level.

Of course, everything I said about fear, well, it doesn't apply to Batman. Because he's wicked awesome.