Knowing God's mind...

I'll let you in on a pet peeve of mine: it's people who presume to know the mind of God. And to be sure, there's been a lot of that going around in the wake of the loss of Shuttle Columbia.

The Iraqi response to the Columbia tragedy was predictable enough. Satan America launched an Israeli into space on board one of its spacecraft, so naturally, what happened over Texas last Saturday was nothing less than a demonstration of Allah's might as he exacted retribution against the kuffir. That's pretty cut and dried. And predictable.

While doing my daily surf yesterday, though, I was surprised to find two more examples of folks doing the Amazing Kresgin bit (with God as their "volunteer from the audience") in discussionsreferences to Columbia's loss.

The WSJ's Best of the Web quoted part of a letter published in the San Francisco Chronicle, where a resident of that city of peace and tolerance pointed out how the Columbia tragedy was an act of God designed to "send a strong message...to the lying, two-faced hypocrites in the White House."

To be fair, this revelation of what God had in mind when he caused STS-107 to fall from the sky was contested by another resident of that cool, gray city of love, who accused the government of a secret plot to "sabotage the mission to direct future finances away from NASA to further the military industrial complex."

(Back-of-the-envelope analysis: The 2003 defense budget is around $400 billion; the 2003 NASA budget is $15 billion, of which only $6 billion is allocated for "human space flight." To suggest that the Columbia crash was the result of a plot to expand the ever-lovin' "military-industrial complex" by, um, 1.5% is ludicrous on its face. Any such plotters, were they to exist, would have to be shot for incompetence.)

Yet perhaps the acme of perverted mind-reading - also noted on the WSJ page - came out of the Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kansas, which hammered home a "God's message to the White House" theme similar to that of the San Francisco cretin noted above.

In a pair of clearly sick "press releases," this church appears to be experiencing an orgasm of joy at the loss of Columbia and its crew because... well, let me quote from "The 7 are in Hell!":

The arm of the Lord - in one instant - reduced American technology to a sprinkling of debris and body parts over East Texas - home of fag-enabler Bush.

There you have it. God smacked the Shuttle from the sky to express His displeasure with a lack of progress in the persecution of gays. The fact that this was done over Texas was clearly His way of directing this message to the President's attention. I hate to say this, but when compared to the scurrilous ramblings from California and Kansas, the Iraqi rant almost sounds rational.

I said "almost."

In the end, what is so much fun about reading the mind of the Creator is that - if you do it right - it's a no-lose game. Did your enemy get sick and die? Were your prayers answered? It was God's handiwork! Did your enemy, instead, thrive and prosper? Were your prayers ignored? The hand of the Devil is evident! I am no mind reader, but if I were God, I would have a special place reserved for scum who exploit tragedy in an attempt to elevate their stature and demonstrate their fine understanding of God's mind.

* * *

This reminds me of another no-lose game: that of demanding proof where no objective standard of evidence exists (which is typically the case in any kind of political discussion). It's being played for all that it's worth in the Iraqi situation.

I caught the last part of today's CSPAN telecast of the Security Council session. I noted - not surprisingly - that nobody's mind was changed by Powell's disclosures. Indeed, everyone had statements at hand that obviously were prepared in advance of Powell's presentation and said the Same Old Thing.

What I found mildly amusing - among other things - was one of the counterarguments from the Iraqi representative, basically to the effect that everything they'd heard and seen simply did not constitute "proof" of anything.

(I fully expect the evening news to run with this as a way of driving the facts behind resolution 1441, i.e., that Iraq is required to prove it has disarmed and not anyone else's job to prove that it has not, into the background, but I digress...)

To prove something outside of a forum where rules exist for that kind of thing is much like nailing jelly to a tree, and the task is even harder if your jury is disinclined to believe you in the first place.

Over the years, I've come to call this attitude the "Dealey Plaza syndrome," as I first encountered it during college among aficionados of various JFK assassination conspiracy theories. These folks - in the face of well-documented research (not to mention common sense) that shows Lee Harvey Oswald to have been the shooter, and the only one - deem any suggestion doubting the existence of an elaborate conspiracy as fraudulent on its face.

Devoted conspiracy theorists will typically rebut such suggestions with "facts" long ago shown to be wrong, as well as wild allegations about secret committees, furtive operatives, and certain classified documents. It occurred to me after one particularly unproductive discussion about the JFK assassination that, were I to have the power to take people back into time to that moment and place so they could witness what happened, I would be accused of the basest charlatanism (at best) if there were no gunmen to be found on the grassy knoll, or the sewer, or wherever.

This is so because the belief in such facts or allegations is grounded not in any kind of evidence, but in the expression made famous by the prominent poster in Fox Mulder FBI office on late, lamented The X Files: "I want to believe."

People who hate America will believe anything that supports their hatred, and Iraq is merely a vehicle for that end. (Remember when the left hated Saddam? That was when we thought supporting him against Iran was a good idea, but again, I digress...) Nothing anyone can say or do will change that.

"We have photographs..."

"Faked!"

"We have documents..."

"Forged!"

"We have the testimony of defectors..."

"Suborned!"

The good news is that nobody with a brain at the U.N. is fooled by the countercharges (not that it matters, as the U.N. is determined to do nothing, anyway). The bad news is that the Security Council came nowhere close to following through on resolution 1441, preferring instead to lay out yet another tough game plan with regard to what Iraq "must" do, although the use of the word collocation 'or else', followed by any mention of possible consequences should Iraq fail to comply, was conspicuously absent.

It doesn't matter, really. Having the U.N. say 'or else', or anything at all, for that matter, was not the point of today's ritual, and everybody knows it.

Cheers...