CRAPL?

    Recently an invitation was presented to me to attend an exclusive private party.  I had no idea what it was all about. I had nothing better to do and accepted.   At the appointed time I was picked up by the individual who had extended the invitation.  As we were pulling out of the driveway I was handed a black blindfold and told to put it on.  I was taken aback, but he explained it would be a party joke.   So I put on the blindfold and we drove around for about twenty minutes.   Suddenly we slowed down and stopped and I was instructed to remove the blindfold.    We had arrived in a typical residential neighborhood, but there were not any nearby street signs. 

    We entered the small, well appointed home. There were a dozen people already present. Everyone was wearing a name tag with only a first name on it. One of the older women said,

    “Now that you have arrived we can begin.”
   
    At this point the person who had brought me started speaking,

    “We are the Compassionate Retributive Action Punishment League (CRAPL),”  he said.

    “Wow, that’s a mouthful,”  I joked.

    At this he launched into a lengthy description of their group.  They were a deeply religious group which believed in the fundamental truth of retribution.  They worshiped a god who they called Halla.  Halla was a remote and entirely transcendent deity who demanded absolute obedience. Their belief system had no redeemer, but required each of them to expiate their own sins. Their motto was from the New Testament, “do not be deceived for whatsoever a man sows that he shall also reap.”  Their entrance into an afterlife of paradise depended upon their faithfulness in imposing just retribution.  He went on to explain that their ‘League’ was made up of many other groups of like mind. He mentioned the Muslim Minority Punishment Society (MUMPS).  He mentioned another group called the Great National Occidental Muslim Expulsion Society (GNOMES).  He also mentioned a group called Islamic Investigators (ISIS) and so forth.  He spoke of several of these groups as integral parts of CRAPL.  These types of group descriptions ran on for at least fifteen minutes or so and then he paused and asked,

    “Do you have any questions?”

    I had found this entire experience fascinating and wanted to learn as much about this movement as possible so I asked the most penetrating question which I could frame.

    “How exactly do you expiate your own sins,”  I asked.

    He explained that they advocate the same things exactly for Muslims that Muslims advocate for all of those they call ‘infidels’ and other Muslims who fail to participate in the carnage..  As an example he cited passages from the Koran which advocate the beheading of infidels.  He cited another passage from the Koran which spoke of lopping off of a hand and foot on opposite sides of a body and subjecting what was left to crucifixion. He explained a number of their actions.  He told the story of how they had captured a Muslim who had used an electric drill in Libya to drill holes in the knees of Coptic Christians.   When they were sure they had the right man they drilled a hole in each of his knees with a wood bit. He described how they had doused one in gasoline and burned him to death.  He described yet another whose head had been sawn off.   At these descriptions of the Muslims screaming, gurgling, and begging for mercy I felt uneasy.  He sensed my discomfort.

    “When we do these things”, he explained, “we are guaranteed entrance into the Paradise of Halla.  It is in Paradise that men will be provided with a multitude of virgins, and women will receive compliant husbands.  This is how we are each redeemed.  Moreover, we have the moral obligation to do these things because it is the compassionate and just thing to do. The Muslims who are punished are themselves saved by our help.”   He then cited another well known New Testament text: “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

    When I arrived back at home I contemplated at length everything I had heard.  These were powerful experiences.  We have been drawn into this nightmare by a government which inexplicably wants its own citizens to die.  I struggled to understand the meaning of this. I could not grasp it.  I concluded that what it meant was that government had failed to defend the public that it is sworn to protect. This failure to defend precipitates the rise of private security forces (death squads).  They  do what an incompetent or evil government is unable or unwilling to do.  They are the final product of the failed state. I have now accepted the demonstrable fact that the United States of America is a failed state.   Ever since this happened I have been using an increasing number of black blindfolds.