Has anyone seen or heard about this St. Paul's Stations of the Cross controversy?

The paintings were done by a New York artist named Gwyneth Leech, and the militarist Xtians are "up in arms" (if you will pardon the war punning) over it, and have begun a depressingly predictable scorched earth campaign against the church.

And then there is this curious news item not receiving much notice either:

Anti-Bush painting hidden by US Attorney General

And then, of course, there is the refusal of the network affiliates' local stations to play the commercial with Cindy Sheehan.

Seems it is very easy to get everyone on the same page and create a conformity consensus regarding these sorts of conflicts.

Some of you might want to think about that, next time you have the impulse to crucify posters here with whom you disagree, like Shambles.

It was the vicious personal attacks upon Shambles by Joe and the clones that drove me off from this place. I drop by every now and then to visit, see what the old stomping ground is up to--but there is always some glaring example of the Mudcat majoritarian consensus that reminds me why you can never go home again.

I ducked in here today, just after reading about these censorship issues, and the personal and vicious attacks on decent people like Cindy Sheehan and the congregation of St. Paul's Church, who are genuinely and painfully trying to make sense of the madness of this world. So I was already in a contemplative mindset when I checked in here.

I got turned off to Mudcat around the same time as the Bush administration began building it's pro-war consensus. I felt that Mudcat's demonization of Shambles and others who disagreed with the views of the majority here was despicable and sickening, and very closely mirrored the macho, militant ways the militarist majoritarian consensus was formed to go to war here in the US.

Just like anti-war dissent is now being "policed" by right wing surrogates for the Bush administration who insist on maintaining their militarist majoritarian grip upon our national consensus, so too do Joe and clones and their majoritarian consensus.

Perhaps it is time some of the self-professed "spiritual" and "religious" Mudcatters, whether Christian or Buddhist, took a tour of the Stations of the Cross linked to above, and gave some thought to how they are sending the very same negative energy into the universe they accuse the Bushites of sending into the universe with their policing tactics of the borders between conformity and dissent.

The tone and ambiance here at Mudcat in recent years reminds me very much of the "it can't happen here" sort of head in the sand thinking.

Wake up and smell the blood on the virtual Mudcat floor from your "battles" to "save" Mudcat's "way of life" and your "loyal Mudcat friends" from dissenters like Shambles.

Is "liking Mudcat the way it is" really worth the cost your souls are paying to police the forum and keep it this way?