IF JESUS RETURNED RIGHT NOW

As Easter approaches, it's not inappropriate to speculate upon what would happen if Jesus were to return today.

As Tecumseh, the great Shawnee warrior, shouted at William Henry Harrison in the early 1800s, "You killed the son of your God, then you worshipped him when he was dead, and now you kill those who choose not to follow him."

If Christ came back today to resume preaching the Sermon on the Mount, Karl Rove would slime him in the media, then kill him outright, then turn his words into right wing hatespeak, then kill those who refuse to follow in his name. 

If Christ came back to organize against Bush's war, Rove's pet bloviators would shriek about Mary Magdalene.  Isn't that her seated next to Christ in DaVinci's "Last Supper"?  Wasn't she unmarried, pregnant with Christ's bastard child,  catching his blood dripping from the cross?

Rush Limbaugh would demand to know what right did the self-proclaimed "Son of God" had to a relationship out of wedlock?  Who was he to feed those loaves and fishes to the undeserving poor, prolonging the existence of inferior racial stock?  Who was he to attack those moneychangers who are the Elect of God and the sponsors of Rush's air time?

Then O'Reilly would slime the Easter thing.  A self-anointed "peace prophet" rising from the tomb?  Poppycock, he'd say.  Just another pinko hippie terrorist conspiracy theory.
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Hitler claimed Christ was an Aryan supremacist.  Now Rove, DeLay & company use him to justify dictatorial, greed-approving, gay-hating, war loving, torture-is-fine bigotry. 

Easter says otherwise.  It should remind us that if Jesus returned to preach the Gandhian love-thy-neighbor subversion with which he challenged the Romans, Karl Rove would do what Pilate did. 

But Rove would be better at the spin.