Amoeba’s Lorica: Whose Genocide Are You On?

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Amoeba

HOLOCAUST, n.: Mass murder perpetrated by my enemies.
SELF-DEFENSE, n.: Mass murder perpetrated by my friends.

On the 1st of July, in the common era year 2026, the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, after nearly three years cravenly solemnly debating the blisteringly obvious, declared the Palestinian Holocaust in Gaza a genocide.

As a public service, Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba here provides the otherwise-unavailable text of this declaration, as it [ahem] should have been.

Office of the General Assembly
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)
Louisville, KY 40202

1 July 2026 CE

A PROCLAMATION

Whereas, after a minor incursion into its territory on 7 October 2023, the State of Israel and its allies, including these United States of America to which we are bound in allegiance, has undertaken a systematic destruction – a holocaust – of the people of Gaza and the civic infrastructure needed to support these people; and 

Whereas, this holocaust continues to the present day, with no sign or prospect of abatement; and

Whereas, this holocaust is a continuation of one that the State of Israel has systematically inflicted on the non-Jewish inhabitants of Gaza, and of the larger region of Palestine of which Gaza is a part, since the extralegal foundation of Israel as an apartheid-practicing State in the year 1948 CE; and 

Whereas, the 78-years-and-counting duration of this holocaust, and its escalation in Gaza since October 2023, has caused the peoples of the world to label the assault by Israel on Gaza a genocide, a label which the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the USA (PCUSA) has chosen to adopt; and 

Whereas, after a similarly minor incursion into its territory on 11 September 2001, the United States of America undertook a systematic destruction of the people of Iraq and the civic infrastructure needed to support these people, an action which the PCUSA chose not to label a genocide; and

Whereas, the PCUSA continues to claim that it stands in the tradition of Jean Calvin and the Reformed Christian Churches that he inspired (the so-called Calvinist churches); and

Whereas, the PCUSA thereby adopts the Sadducean principle of sola scriptura, that all inspired writings about the Christian faith are to be found in the Bible and nowhere else, and that those writings include both the New and the Old Testament, of the latter of which Jesus the Christ is quoted as saying “not one jot will be removed”; and

Whereas, the Old Testament includes within it the book of Joshua, which commands the extermination of peoples opposed to the establishment and perpetuation of the State of Israel, and prescribes dire consequences for those who fail to execute its commands to perfection; and 

Whereas, the Old Testament also includes within it the book of Judges, which describes, in grim detail, the consequences of failing to execute the commands of the book of Joshua to perfection; and

Whereas, the decision by the General Assembly of the PCUSA to label the actions of the State of Israel a genocide, but not the similar actions of the United States of America, must be taken both as hypocritical and a rejection of the Holy Writ which it has sworn to take as the sole guide to an authentic life in Christ – whose name is Joshua (“Jesus” being the Greek translation of this name, rendered in English);

Now, therefore, the PCUSA, in recognition of the irresolvable conflicts resulting from its claims and its actions, and in minimal authentic atonement for its sins, hereby declares itself disbanded, effective on publication of this Proclamation.

Congregations within PCUSA are hereby enjoined to cease activities forthwith, and to dispose of their material and spiritual assets in ways that actively provide sacrificial service to people, other than PCUSA clergy and lay officials, in the communities in which they were formerly active.

Any remaining assets are to be split, by the executors of the former PCUSA’s estate, between the Flat Earth Society, champions of fact in this world, and the President-for-Life campaign of Donald Trump and his heirs and successors, champions of good governance, at both of which the PCUSA has failed.

Posted in Amoeba's Lorica, current events, religion, satire, We the People | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Amoeba’s Lorica: Car-Rascal

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Amoeba

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba takes you back, dear reader, to the Common Era year 1965. In which the starry-eyed idealism of Camelot and the Great Society is being taken down by flaming crosses, flaming Quakers, flaming Buddhists, and flaming babies bathed in napalmolive, as what was becoming the defining event of Baby Boomer history in these Untied States in North of America unfolded: Vietnam. 

It was the year of the Beatles album Rubber Soul, and its heralding of the profound shift in the culture of the time from Peace Corps to peacenik, from changing reality for society by direct social action to changing reality for the self by direct pill, tab, jab (well OK, maybe not jab), snort, and smoke consumption. Turn on, tune in, drop out.

And it was the year that Dale Wasserman’s musical Man of La Mancha began its initial six-year run on Broadway and its 61-year-and-counting exhortation to English-speaking audiences not to drop out, not to quit on Camelot, not to give up the quest. The quest to be an agent of grace in the world, an agent of positive social change.

No matter how hopeless. No matter how far. No matter how painful, unto shame, bankruptcy, jail, exile, death.

No matter what the facts is.

The champion of fact in Man of La Mancha is one Sansón Carrasco, a physician (“doctor”) and styled, anachronistically and perhaps pointedly, a “Bachelor of Science”. Anachronistically, because Man of La Mancha, like its source, is set in early 17th century Spain, and the Bachelor of Science degree did not exist until it was first awarded by an English university in the 19th century. For pointedly, see “napalmolive”, supra; Carrasco is assigned to that class of subhumans which has maliciously created, and bestowed upon us, a planet with chemicals in it.

It falls to Carrasco the rascally task of curing Señor Alonso Quijana of his mad quest for courtesy and grace in the world, in the person of the knight errant Don Quixote de la Mancha, and returning him to the world of sanity and fact … a world in which the facts consign peasants to their stations, without recognition, without expectation, without respect; a world of maggots, morosely accepting, even grateful for, the dungheap on which they crawl.

A task at which Car-Rascal eventually succeeds … only to be undone by the pleas of a servant girl for whom Don Quixote’s lunacy is the last glimmer of hope, the final friable gossamer between herself and the life of misery, self-loathing, and despair to which the facts have consigned her.

Alas, the world is full of quests, great and ennobling in the eyes of those who envisage them, who promote them to others and get those others to buy in. 

Against whom, those who plead the facts plead in vain. Because they report what people need to know, rather than what they wish to hear. 

Because they don’t offer hope that what the people wish to hear can and will be, the facts be damned.

And, worst of all, because the adherence to facts (to the extent that it is given to us to know what they are) is itself a quest, ennobling in the eyes of those who envisage it, who promote it to others and get those others to buy in.

Alas.

For it is impossible for YFNA to sit in the orchestra pit for Man of La Mancha, horns in hand waiting on his cues, his back to the invisible stage, to hear Carrasco yell “These are the facts!” to Quixote, and not see him in a Fauci mask, the wreckage of the American Yankee scientific enterprise at his feet. 

To hear Quixote yell back “The facts are the enemy of the truth”, and not see him in a blue suit and a red tie trailing past his diaper and onto the ground below.

To hear Aldonza plead with the dying Quijana to bring back Quixote and give her back the dream, the hope, of Dulcinea, and not see her wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, an anti-vaxx sign in her hand, and a MAGA cap on her head.

If you reach for an unreachable star, and succeed, what will you do with it?

Perhaps more importantly: what will it do with you?

Speaking of napalmolive.

Posted in Amoeba's Lorica, current events, music, politics, We the People | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Amoeba’s Lorica: Car-Rascal

Dude and Dude Handel It

Posted on April 18, 2026 by Amoeba

“Well, here we are again, dude, coolin’ our heels backstage while OC goes an’ tries ta break glass wit’ sound.”

“Ya got sumthin’ betta ta do, dude? Like, cleanin’ yer room fer once?”

“Don’ gotta now, yeah? I, like, got permission!”

“Ta perpetrate a public health hazard?”

“‘Messy yeah‘, dude! Amirite?”

“[…] So, like, don’ say OC ain’t nevah done nothin’ fer ya, OK?”

“I sapose, dude. But, couldn’t he h’ve sent fer pizza fer us while he’s singin’ an’ dancin’ out there? An’ can’t he be singin’ somethin’ that, like, makes sense?”

“They’s takin’ donations.”

“Which they won’ be gettin’ none a if’n peeps can’t figger out what ennybody’s sayin’.”

“Peeps did kinda talk weird 300 years ago.”

“Weird? Busted is more like it. Didn’t they have no English teachers back then? I sent ’em back sum a tha teachers we had in school, them teachers w’d have conniptions! Like, how’s about this line? ‘He trusted in God that he would deliver him, let him deliver him, if he delight in him.’ Which him is him? Red ink special, an’ a lousy grade ta boot! Sheesh!”

“An’ ya’d fix this, like, how?”

“Right now, dude. ‘She.'”

“‘She …?'”

“‘He trusted in God that she would deliver him, let her deliver him’, yada. Don’t gotta guess what pronoun means who no more. An’ we both know that ‘high an’ mighty’ has gotta be …”

“Dude?”

“What?”

“Don’ go there. An’ one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Ya know how some dudes an’ chicks go on ’bout bein’ ‘born again’? This ain’t what they mean, dude.”

“Beats tha alternative, dude.”

“What alternative?”

“How long c’d you hang on wit’out a liver?”

“[…] O .. my ..”

“Two minutes an’ more this song goes on ’bout how God is gonna de-liver this poor sap. What, is God like tha US Cavalry what shoots alla tha buffalo on tha plains for their tongues? Yer gonna rip tha guy up, use alla tha parts. De-liver him, de-kidney him, de-stomach him, de-blad …”

“Ew!!!!”

“[…] Ya don’ wanna go there either, dude.”

“Why not?”

“‘All we like sheep‘.”

“[…] Tell me there’s a comma in there, dude. Please tell me there’s a comma …”

“I can’t even tell ya how many a them sheep ‘r scared, dude.”

“You’re not helpin’, dude.”

“Think ‘mint sauce’, dude.”

“Is it too late ta try ‘n’ get OC ta bail on this gig?”

“Dunno, dude. Y’ll havta find tha conductor an’ ask if’n he c’n be excused. Her name’s Grace. Seems ta be a OK kinda chick. Amazin’, even.”

“[…] Du-UUUUUUUUUUUDE!!!!“

Posted in Dude and Dude, humor, language, music | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Dude and Dude Handel It