I was wrong

        I was wrong. I once thought that our Governor, Rick Scott, was the poorest example of elected civil servant in the nation. That honor has been taken away by Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick who, in the wake of the horrible events  of early Sunday morning in Orlando, tweeted "You reap what you sow!"  Patrick later claimed, in the face of overwhelming  "Tweetiverse" condemnation, that the tweet was "preset," however the time stamp of 7:00 AM,  local Texas time, would have made the tweet at 9:00 AM EST, 4 hours after the end of the standoff at the Pulse Nightclub. Anyone awake would have known something was terribly wrong back East.

        I would like to believe the Lt. Gov, really I would, but it IS Texas, where state sponsored murder  is a major indoor sport and Texas leads the league with Florida not too far behind.  One wonders exactly what the twisted mind of this Brazos bumpkin perceives it to be that is "sown" by the LGBT community.  I have never seen violence, intolerance or bigotry "sown" by any members of the LGBT community. It doesn't happen. Never. I have, on the other hand, seen acceptance and inclusion after years of rejection and discrimination.  What should have happened Sunday morning, if what was sown was truly reaped, would have been the convening of the safest gathering  on earth, where individual differences were washed away by understanding , tolerance and acceptance of the individual on their own basis.

        Patrick's attitude is reminiscent of the Reagan administrations several years' "don't worry about it, they're only queers"  point of view as AIDS ravished the community. It is also an example of all the bad things religion can do as well as the truly good works done in many communities by persons of faith. Patrick and the shooter are exceedingly dissimilar save in this one aspect: both , if judged by their actions, believe(d) that it was insufficient for them to simply live their lives as they believed their version of the cosmic muffin dictated. To complete the heavenly daily double they also felt compelled to act out in anger, revenge, or mean spirited sniping.

         In the Orlando shooter's case, this meant that he apparently believed God compelled him to take the lives of individuals who he had never met, but who he, the shooter, in loco God,  had judged and decided to kill. That is psychopathy and insanity.  Patrick on the other hand, smarmy prick that he is, decided to simply make a hurtful statement, regardless of impact on others, based on his personal pipeline to the divine and go on about his day, self satisfied and smug in his delusion that he speaks for God. That is sociopathy.

        Meanwhile, the shattered lives of the families and friends of the victims of the shooting at Pulse will  be forever affected and haunted  by the actions of someone who, as so many have before him, believed himself to be the self appointed  righteous arm of a vengeful God.

         And you wonder why I'm an atheist?