It started out with, "You guessed it - 'In God We Trust' is gone!" Wait, I guessed it? What would have led me to guess something like that? I'm not sure that the sender knows me very well. Like when I heard that there was a new dollar coin coming out, my first thought was, "You know, I'll betchya they leave off the "In God We Trust" inscription." Actually, my first thought was, "Who has the sports section?" Turns out, my wife did, as she was checking the weather forecast on the back page.
Anyway, the forwarded rant continued thusly: "Who originally put 'In God We Trust' onto our currency? My bet is that it was one of the Presidents on these coins. All our U.S. Government has done is Dishonor them, and disgust me!!!"
Okay, let me just stop you there one more time, email ranter. You really want to claim that everything the U.S. Government has done since George Washington was president is a dishonor to him? And your evidence for this is that an inscription is missing from a new coin? Yeah, I can see where putting a person on the moon is just a bunch of hooey in comparison to leaving an inscription off of a coin.
The email ranter then called for action. "If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!! DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE. Together we can force them out of circulation." Everybody needs a cause, I suppose. Just be careful about which one you back. You may get all fired up about it, only to have the whole thing end up as a puff of smoke.
See, apparently this whole things was the result of a glitch in the system. Reuters reported that the mint in Philadelphia is working to correct the "mistake" by making the "necessary technical adjustments." The coins, rather than the latest salvo of the governmental heathens in the war to eliminate God from the world, actually turned out to just have a simple "defect" that the mint is working diligently to correct.
Which might make these coins somewhat valuable, apparently. I read where one of the defective dollars sold online for 400 bucks! I'm having all of the church members here check their dollar coins for the appropriate inscriptions; we may have found a way to resolve our budget crunch!
But actually I have a theory, even more devious and insipid than the vast governmental conspiracy to do away with the divine. I think the one responsible for the ommission was none other than ... God. Here's what I'm thinking: God needed another trivial issue that would distract the religious right away from things that really matter. Bingo - just arrange to leave "In God We Trust" off of the new coins. It's not like that was going to affect God in any way at all. People are going to trust God (or not) because they decide to, not because a coin suggests it. Then, with the religious right busy forwarding emails to each other, getting all worked up and speaking in large red capital letters, the rest of us can just quietly be about our business.
I can't help but think that somewhere, Sacagawea must be chuckling softly to herself ...
10 comments:
"with the religious right busy forwarding emails to each other, getting all worked up and speaking in large red capital letters, the rest of us can just quietly be about our business."
You are awesome.
Now, what sort of devious left wing agenda item are you going to accomplish while the distraction is in place?
I for one am going to XXXXXXXXXXXX!
Heh. Maybe God was tired of seeing the phrase on coins in a nation that worships its money.
Love your post.
I had one of those emails yesterday also.
From JC MO
The energy people can work up over nothing never ceases to amaze me. In this case, the "In God We Trust" actually is on the new coin. At least the one I had in my pocket recently had that phrase along with the Latin "E Pluribus Unum," and the date engraved on the outer rim of the coin. I guess "they" only had the courage to move God to the rim!! Mayby that's where the rubber meets the road.
It’s a conspiracy. That’s my 2 cents worth, er, I mean, dollar coin’s worth (the Godless coin that it is!!!!!)
Nice post Andy - funny when you think about the crazy emails you get these days. I linked to this one at my place.
You know, I don't care what is written on it because I hate pocket change.
Yep, Carl is correct. Vicki (Words and Cats) wrote a post about this a couple of weeks ago and included an illustration:
http://wordsandcats.blogspot.com/2007/03/rumors-about-new-dollar-coin.html
It is always bothersome when someone takes advantage of the church e-mail list to send some insipid, inflammatory, and almost always false e-mail forward filtering through the community.
George Washington was a deist. Putting "in god we trust" is a disgrace to America and our founding fathers. It's also a disgrace to religon. Some religious people conisder it sacrilege to put god on something so dirty as money. Think about it next time please.
This entire hullabaloo is just the latest example of ignorance = contempt prior to investigation. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
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