I don’t want to take away from the terrible tragedy that was the baseball ground shooting, but US politician Steve Scalise returned to Congress today and delivered an emotional speech. Problem being, the speech was nonsense, at least in part. This part:
“When I was laying out on that ball field, the first thing I did, once I was down and I couldn’t move any more, is I just started to pray. And I’ll tell you again it gave me an unbelievable sense of calm knowing that at that point it was in God’s hands. I prayed for very specific things and I’ll tell you: pretty much every one of those prayers was answered. And they were some pretty challenging prayers I was putting in God’s hands but he really did deliver for me and my family and it just gives you that renewed faith in understnding that the power of prayer is something that just you cannot underestimate….
So I’m definitely a living example that miracles do happen. The first place I want to go to thank true angels along the way starts with the United States Capitol Police.”
Urgh.
It’s like those people who are saved by hundreds of years of good science and decades of training and individual brilliance in a hospital theatre only to thank God and appeal to miracles.
No. Just no.
There are plenty of people who are shot and lying in fields praying. And they die. They neither have the police there to help them, nor a body that can sustain the physical attack.
Why is Scalise so special?
He’s not. He’s lucky. And unlucky. Unlucky enough to be there at that time and place, lucky that the bullet didn’t go through his brain, that his body could withstand the onslaught, and that the police were there to help him, along with hospital staff and expert help.
Don’t stand there in your position of power and ability to grandstand and appeal to some nonsense idea of your special-ness and God’s brilliance.
It’s a bloody insult to intelligence.
The Young Turks do well here:
All those people with malaria, AIDs, cancer, fatal bullet wounds, in dangerous car crashes – are you that much more special than them? Are they worth so much less than you? It’s so insulting.