I Repent of My Macbook Pro

I didn’t know that the money I spent on my computer would fund an attack on my religious freedom.

If I had known, I would have bought elsewhere.

I’m a mac. Big time.

I own a Macbook Pro, a Macbook Air 11″, iPad, iPhone, and a Mac Pro.

I’ve also got a couple of old iPods lying around that I don’t use much anymore. I’ve passed along my old hardware to family members. The Apple logo dots my family landscape like a bad case of measles.

I’ve put down a bit of personal coin, buying Apple. But if I had known that my gadget dollars would end up funding an attack on the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that it would go to fuel Christian-bashing bigots who talk about burning down small businesses, I would have put my coin in another slot.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, says that Apple is “boycotting” Indiana. I don’t know exactly what this “boycott” means. Are they closing the Apple stores in Indiana? Or will they refuse to ship their goodies to Indiana? Are they turning off iCloud for Hoosiers? Or, is this just a public flexing of the corporate political muscle, a coded way of saying “we’re going to buy more obedient politicians?” I’m guessing that it’s the latter.

I suppose if Mr Cook does the unthinkable and lowers corporate profits by closing up shop in Indiana, the good people of that state will have to muddle through with pcs and Androids and such. I can tell you for a fact that Dropbox has iCloud beat like a drum. Intolerable as losing the next new Apple thingy might be for fanboys and girls, they will soon learn that life goes on, even without a local Apple store.

Mr Cook says that “Apple will never tolerate discrimination.”

This, from a guy who does not flinch about building his products in China, does business with the liberal and gay-loving governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates. I guess the death penalties for homosexuality in those countries, not to mention the horrible misogyny, don’t constitute “discrimination” for Mr Cook and his Apple, because it appears that they they can certainly tolerate it.

Of course, it might just be that there’s money to be made in those places, and, well, Apple’s intolerance of discrimination can be expected to only go so far.

All I know is that I repent of ever having bought a Mac. I am sorry, oh so sorry, that I accidentally put money that I worked for into the coffers of a corporation that thinks it is my moral teacher instead of my gadget manufacturer.

Because, you see, I don’t think that any of our big multinational corporations have skirts clean enough to give a lecture on morality to anybody, not even a room full of serial killers. These corporations have bought our government and are running this country into the ground while they stuff their own pockets by draining every last bit of cash out of the economy.

They do their deals with slavers, murderers and tyrants from pole to pole. They go to places where they can do whatever they want to the environment and the people and do deals that enrich themselves and their counterparts on the other side. They love Communist nations with their slave labor. They are not offended by countries that execute homosexuals for being gay. Beheadings, kidnapping, human trafficking, needless but highly profitable wars, slavery and misogyny so deep and ugly that it scars the human soul to witness it, are all in a day’s profit to our corporate masters.

These corporations who are lecturing us about morality are not immoral. They are amoral. They are like huge vacuums, sucking up all the wealth and power until they have drained everything else utterly dry and dead.

And now they’ve decided that the money lies in beating down Christianity. The reasons behind this have nothing to do with “homophobia” or that little law from Indiana.

Christianity is the last wall standing between corporatists and total domination of this once great country. Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI, St John Paul II labeled this particular form of facism “corporatism.” Bishops such as Oscar Romero, priests like Father Stanley Rother, nuns such as the four murdered nuns of Nicaragua and Sister Dianna Ortiz, have all shed their blood for being loyal to Christ in corporatist countries.

The Catholic Church, with its insistence that human life is sacred and human beings matter, is the one voice capable of standing against corporatism. That is why their minions in the media were so quick to attack Pope Francis and try to label him — of all ridiculous things — a Communist.

That was particularly rich, coming as it did from people who are the mouthpieces for corporations that built Communist China into the industrial power that it has become.

“Homophobia” as it is being used in attacks about the Indiana religious freedom law, is just a ruse for attacking Christianity. It is another ploy in the on-going and utterly ruthless game of driving Christian thinking and Christian voices from the public square.

Those who are so eager to support this drive need to think carefully what they do. If they succeed, who will be left to defend them when they and their cause becomes unprofitable, as well?

I repent of the Macbook Pro on which I am typing this blog post. I wish I had never bought the thing.

I don’t have the money to throw everything out and start over. But when replacement time comes, I will remember.

I’m going to start in a couple of weeks with the Apple Watch. That’s several hundred dollars I can save.

I’m not sure how I’ll spend the money I save by not buying an Apple Watch. Maybe I’ll use it to organize a bigots-be-gone demonstration at the local Apple store. Or maybe I could go to Indiana and buy some pizza.

Whatever I decide, I will do my best to put it somewhere so that it won’t come back at me later as a political bullet, aimed at my Constitutional Rights.