Editors’ Note: The opinions and ideas expressed in The Accidental Gentrifist are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the Ist network.

Poor Chris Comer and Gillian Gibbons. No, they’re not dead. But their precious Reason isn’t looking so well. Former Texas science curriculum director Comer was recently forced to resign over her qualms against the political nature of non-alien Intelligent Design. And Gibbons, a British teacher at a private school in Sudan, was arrested for allowing her students to name a teddy bear ‘Mohammed.’

Hi Sudan. Meet my teddy bear, ‘A.J. Ayer.’ Wuh oh! Hope a bunch of monkey-loving evil-utionists don’t bang down my door!

The amazing part is, the mob outside the Khartoum jail want to hang a teacher. Kinda reminds me of The Simpsons episode where Springfield almost gets demolished by a comet. After the crisis is averted, Moe the Bartender leads a mob of townsfolk with the cry, “Let's go burn down the observatory, so this'll never happen again!”

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m currently reading The Selected Writings of Jean Baudrillard, which I fully admit I only became interested in after watching a rather bizarre but very excellent short video revealing the impact of Baudrillard’s work on the The Matrix trilogy.

So it’s not surprising that when I think of the schism between religious fundamentalism, I don’t see it primarily as an opposition of interpretation and literalism, or a conflict between an existential priority on the sensual world versus a paramount destination in Paradise. Thanks to Baudrillard, I’m convinced the whole feud can be distilled into a basic conflict between a rise of aniconic authoritative literalism in Abrahamic monotheism, pitted against an individual’s inherent ability and intrinsic right to simultaneously assess a multi-layered symbol and its various relationships to the thing being symbolized. It’s that simple.

In his essay Simulacra and Simulations, Jean ‘desert of the real’ Baudrillard offers that it was the iconoclasts, those who hated the false idols and so destroyed them, who gave those false images their actual worth. The idolaters only perceived them as imperfect reflections of the holy, and were quite happy to worship via proxy. According to Baudrillard, these idolaters expressed the more advanced and “adventurous” mind, because the idea that God can be mirrored in an object reflects an understanding of His death and disappearance, His simultaneous presence and absence. Such veneration is a bewitching kind of shell game, although a practice more than capable of preserving mystery, if not reinforcing it.

Idolaters weren't as dumb as Sunday School would have us believe. They knew that object worship was hollow, and that God lies elsewhere. Baudrillard also claims that these idolaters were wise, well aware that unmasking false images is dangerous, as it reveals to the plain mind that there is ‘nothing’ behind the mask. Destroy a ‘one degree of separation’ relationship with God, and that terminal degree does not grow smaller. In fact, it becomes cavernous, hopelessly mired in a million conflicting routes back toward the divine. Modern monotheism’s overlooked Pandora’s Box.

Perhaps ironically, the birth of fundamentalist aniconism came with the Ten Commandments. After the smashing of the idols, the once-removed relationship with God had to be recreated in scripture, which is to say, in law. This allegorical narrative represents a massive backwards step for humankind, both culturally and intellectually.

(Although the widespread imagery of crucifixes, stars of David, icons, relics, and more manual totems such as rosaries, Buddhist prayer beads and tacky Mexican votive candles all illustrate the impossibility of purging every single form of idolatry, most likely to the benefit of humankind—Not to mention the totally non-pagan representation of the Four Gospels as a Man, a Lion, an Eagle, and an Ox.)

And why exactly did Charlton Heston hafta make us smash our idols anyway? Ask any middle school kid: by far the most effective tool of social persuasion is derision. That’s why I think the ideological front of the War on Terror should be fought primarily with mock-bombs. No, not simulated weapons—artillery shells filled with explosive ridicule.

I'm talking about weaponized irony.

As we know it, April Fools Day started in France in 1508, after Charles IX decreed New Year’s Day ought to be January 1st, instead of in Spring. The subsequent tomfoolery consisted of bringing gifts and paying cheeky visits to neighbors who were either too isolated to hear about the change, or were ideologically opposed to it. Basically, it was like a holiday where you get to treat people like the total morons you’ve always suspected them of being.

Both in Europe and North America, this evolved into the public hoax. Three of my favorite modern examples:

1. In reference to Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, an April 1998 newsletter from New Mexicans for Science and Reason contained an article claiming the Alabama state legislature had voted to change π from 3.1415… to "the more Biblical value of 3.0."

2. To reduce Road Rage, BMW announced a car horn that would soothe other motorists rather than irritate them.

3. In 1976, a British astronomer told BBC radio listeners that a planetary alignment would result in a unique force against gravity, making people lighter at precisely 9:47 a.m. He invited listeners to jump at that moment, to experience "a strange floating sensation." Dozens of people later called in to say the experiment worked.

The nature of the 'hoax' is that it’s not funny unless somebody falls for it. But ultimately, it’s a tool to enforce assimilation of cultural knowledge. Really, the prankster’s pulling more than his or her weight, helping the herd get wise. But the cognitive process has to be switched on. Hoaxes require not only imagination, but, you know, some kind of a delay in the hearing of information and the decision to accept or reject it as fact. A guy walks into a bar: you think you’re following the joke teller down one path, and the punch line reveals you were being led down another. You're being forced to change your mind. To see the other side of things.

But that’s the thing about people who spend all their time down here trying to be 'up there,' regardless of whether that means seventy-odd virgins or bugle-playing angels, whether these dreamers fly planes into financial centers or blow up abortion clinics, declare jihad on Danish cartoonists or insist their child’s public school be wall-papered with the Ten Commandments—overall, they just don’t have the greatest understanding of irony.

Ohmigod, I just realized something: Alanis Morissette might be a terrorist.