Indignant Desert Birds

Random thoughts

Posted on October 23rd, 2009 by Punning Pundit

Oh gods. It’s been a while. The pipes are rusty, the fingers need limbering, and if I don’t write soon, I’m going to… stop being able to find a good metaphor.

Just watched V for Vendetta. Fun movie in the “Action packed never stops moving” sort of way. The thing I really don’t get is the veneration of Guy Fawkes. Let’s look at the record: man tried to blow up parliament as part of a pro-catholic movement. Alright, that doesn’t mean so much in America in 2009. After all, here and now it’s mostly the Baptists who are crazed terrorists and the “seculars” who try and put their heads down to ignore whatever it is they’re doing.

But in 1605 “Catholics” (Latin for “universal”) and Protestants (Latin for “nu-uh, you are so wrong about _something_”) were in a state of war. Not in the technical sense of “conflict between 2 or more state powers having more than 1000 causalities”, but in the more brutal sense that most of the European nations would be engaged in a bloody civil war that would set brother against sister until long after the Treaty of Westphalia sought to end cross border religious raids.

Except England. While it was technically a “protestant” nation, there was a great deal of informal toleration– roughly a Catholic equivalent for “don’t ask, don’t tell” in modern America. By century’s end England would replace this informal policy with a formal one. In the mean time there were known Catholics serving in the Parliament along side their Protestant brethren.

That’s the Parliament that Guy Fawkes wanted to destroy. That’s the _reason_ he wanted to destroy it. Guy Fawkes plotted to bring back the fire, bring back the bloody reign inter-sectional warfare that plagued England in the rule of “Bloody” Mary. The Gunpowder Treason and Plot that ought never be forgot? There’s a reason for this warning. Fawkes had a vision of the world on fire, and only accident prevented him from destroying the guarantor of English Liberty.

So, in 2008, when I see the Church of Scientology– a small and powerless cult– harassed and protested by people wearing Guy Fawkes masks, I being to wonder if this “anonymous” group that has forgotten it’s history, or is enacting a parody of it’s most shameful bits, hoping that we all will remember what life was before 1649 and Maryland’s act of Toleration. If it’s the later: well done internet people. Maybe it will be enough to push back against modern religious in-Tolerance.

If the former– if they really are donning the mask of a religious zealot to harass the world’s least-powerful religion– it’s a sad message that we’ve lost the lesson of the 5th of November…