"And as for Iraq…", the righteously enraged anchor man concluded, turning towards the camera that showed him in the most sanctimonious light possible. "Everything is great and getting better there. And if it wasn't for the lying liberal media and the traitorous democrats and anti-war demonstrators encouraging the Muslim extremist terrorists and Saddam loyalists to kill and maim our troops, everything would be perfect there by now. And we'd have taken over Syria and Iran and Saudi Arabia too and found all of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction because that's where he hid them. And we also would have turned those countries into democracies, which is what all the reasonable Muslims want, and the unreasonable Muslims better do things our way if they know what good for them. And we won't stop there, we'll go to Pakistan, and North Korea, and Indonesia, and Libya, and Egypt, and Yemen, and back to Vietnam to finish the job there too. And we'll take care of China because they're better at capitalism than we are. And we'll show those cheese-eating surrender monkeys in France, and we'll show the Canadians because some of them speak French, and we'll show those cowardly terrorist lovers in Spain, and then we'll take Old Europe, and we'll take New Europe, and we won't stop, we'll go all the way to Moscow! Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggghhh!"

At that moment all across America, millions of tragically information starved and ill-informed voters nodded in silent agreement. The anchor regained his composure.

"And now it's time for the 'Dwithit Factor' with your host Phil Dwithit.", the anchor said with a look in his eye that said, 'it's not enough to simply agree with Phil Dwithit, you must love him too'.

Yet another middle aged white male appeared on camera with his face twisted into a scowl not unlike the look an alcoholic father comes home wearing after a bad day at work.

"Good evening.", Phil said disingenuously. "America is under attack not only from Muslim terrorists but from liberal, sleaze merchants who poison this nation with obscenity, porn, and sacrilege. Like pedophile priests they prey upon the young, forcing vile filth into their ears and brainwashing our children into joining the sick, depraved underworld of drug addiction and promiscuity. These immoral cowards are hiding behind the first amendment so that they can exploit the nation's innocents for profit and they simply don't care that they're transforming this nation into one where a Columbine happens every week."

"With us today is one of the most notorious internet sickos out there who spreads his brand of moronic atheistic nihilism across the web hoping to destroy all religions and send all believers off to concentrations camps just like the commies did. He's Brian Voth, creator of Fireaxe and slimy spawn of Satan.", Phil said, finally pausing to breathe.

"Thanks for having me. Nice alliteration.", Brian replied. "Do you always speak in logical fallacies?"

"Excuse me?", Phil said, caught off guard.

"Poor arguments. Empty words. Misinformation.", the guitarist tried to clarify. "Everything you said was a logical fallacy. I counted three false analogies, five ad hominems, two slippery slope arguments, three arguments from adverse consequences, a bunch of half truths, an endemic confusion of causation and correlation and one long straw man argument. And you threw in some lies too, for color I would think."

"Well of course, the spawn of Satan would say something like that, and avoid the real argument.", Phil said indignantly.

"There is no real argu…", Brian began but Phil cut him off by talking over him, as is the style on modern talk shows.

"You're a Satanist! Atheism is a religion! It's a religion because they can't prove that God doesn't exist! And that means…", Phil bellowed, but Brian fought back by using the talk over strategy to cut him off in turn.

"That's non-falsifiable. Non-falsifiable! You can't prove a negative.", Brian shouted.

"…AND THAT MEANS, if you'd let me finish.", Phil, an expert at interrupting his guests, having had lots of practice, said loudly and slowly. "…that since you don't worship God, you worship Satan!"

"Excluded middle.", Brian said calmly.

"It is not! It says in the bible that…", Phil began.

"Argument from authority.", Brian answered.

Phil cleared his throat and started again, "Jesus said…".

"Same thing.", Brian said smiling.

Phil looked flustered, but quickly pulled out his trump card. "So is the world a better place without Saddam Hussein?", he roared, hoping to pin the surprisingly intellectual rocker.

"Begging the question.", Brian said with a laugh.

Phil was speechless, but only for a moment. "So you refuse to answer any of my questions. Just what I would have expected from a Satanist.", Phil looked at the camera and gave the audience the very well rehearsed look of a man who had just won an argument. Across America, millions of viewers bought the act. Brian just shook his head.

"In your CD you prove that you're a Satanist.", Phil began, pulling out the lyrics booklet for "Food for the Gods". "You sing about Satan winning a war in heaven, about the Virgin Mary getting raped, about Jesus getting crucified upside-down. You talk about your goddess Kali, who's the Hindu version of Satan. You sing about killing all the gods, and you advocate war and rape and slaughter. That sounds like Satanism to me. You are a Satanist! Quit trying to deny it!"

"Did you read the disclaimer?", Brian said, giving his eyes a quick roll and further enraging the 'interviewer'. "It's on the back of the booklet, 'Those who attempt to portray the actions and attitudes of the characters depicted within as being those the artist advocates and holds are pushing their own agenda and do not deserve your attention'. If you had you wouldn't be making an ass out of yourself right now."

"Of course I read that.", Phil lied. "You are the ass. You can't just shirk your responsibility to the community. Kids are going to listen to your CD and commit crimes and that's your fault no matter what your disclaimer says."

"They might.", the guitarist conceded.

Phil was stunned again, but recovered. "Ha! That's right."

"But plenty of people read the bible and then go on to kill people because they think that God or Jesus told them to do it.", Brian added. "If we're going to start banning books and CDs for violent content and inciting crime, the bible is definitely at the top of the list."

Phil scowled. He looked down at the booklet for anything that he could find that he could shove in the fiery young man's face and twist around to discredit him. He found it.

"A swastika!", Phil erupted as he looked down at the cover. "You're a Nazi! Zoom in on this."

Phil turned the booklet to face the camera as the cameraman zoomed in where he was pointing.

"Yes, that's one of six symbols I chose that represent the major ideologies that influence the world today.", Brian explained with a sigh, knowing that that his words would be uttered in futility. "There's a swastika, a hammer and sickle, a crescent, a cross, an American eagle, and a star of David."

"It's a swastika! A swastika!", Phil ranted, getting a little too excited and spraying spittle on everything in his vicinity. "You're a Nazi! A Nazi!"

Then Phil looked a little closer. "Wait a second. Right next to it. Zoom in on that. Do you see it?", Phil said as his anger quickly turned to fear and his face began to pale. "It's a Star of David. Right next to the swastika."

"Yes.", Brian tried to explain. "Those are two of the six major ideologies. I put those particular two next to each other because of their inter-relatedness."

The stunned demagogue's eyes opened wide as he heard the words. Brian looked around, wondering if he had said something wrong.

"You know what that makes you, don't you?", Phil asked, his face ashen.

"A Satanist?", Brian answered slowly.

"Worse. An Anti-Semite.", Phil said coldly.

"Oh shit.", Brian replied.

The next forty-eight hours was a blur. The creator of Fireaxe was taken out of the studio by force, gratuitously roughed up a bit, and locked up in a holding cell somewhere within the massive Southern California Department of Homeland inSecurity main office and prison complex. There he was tortured by being forced to fill out dozens of forms in triplicate and answer the same personal questions to scores of inSecurity agents. Then the interrogation began.

"Who are you working with?", the interrogator asked for the twentieth time.

"I told you, I'm not a terrorist.", Brian groaned.

"We'll decide that.", the interrogator continued. "Give us a name."

"I don't know any terrorists.", Brian confessed, but the interrogator wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer.

"Alright, alright.", Brian broke down. "There's this guy that I know. Pretty high up. He's got terrorist connections. He used to be CIA. He funneled lots of money to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, millions of dollars that they used to buy guns and explosives."

"That's what I'm talking about.", the interrogator smiled. "Write this down.", he told a subordinate.

"He's got connections to a few corporations in the US too who sold chemical and biological weapons to Saddam Hussein. He pulled strings in the White House to get the deal to go through. And he's got ties to the Saudi royal family.", Brian added. "He's had a hand in building up every organization that we're fighting today. He's as dirty as they come."

"Yeah. Alright! We're going to go nail this traitor.", the interrogator said excitedly. "What's his name?"

Brian raised his head and looked the interrogator in the eye. "His name is George H.W. Bush. He's the president's father."

The interrogator slammed his clipboard onto the floor and threw a fit.

"So now you're going to torture me right?", Brian said, resigned to his fate.

"No. The United States doesn't torture people. It's illegal", the angry agent said. " But it's perfectly legal for us to send you somewhere and have them do it for us."

And so they did.

Brian was taken to an undisclosed Middle Eastern country where he was tortured relentlessly for months. They tied him to a rack and tortured him, and when he got angry they took him to a longer rack. There he was drawn until he felt nothing and they had broken his back. Still he gave up no names. So they burned a cross into his flesh and pulled out his intestines before his eyes. Still he gave up no names. So they dragged him down to the river of madness and baptized him. Still he gave up no names. So they made him watch the Super Bowl halftime show over and over and over. Still he gave up no names. Finally, looking through the collected works of Fireaxe to get more ideas for ways of tormenting its creator, they found an old but novel idea.

"Take him to Jerusalem!", the head torturer cried out. "And crucify him."

The road to Jerusalem was long and brutal. Every step of the way Brian had to drag a heavy wooden cross that was tied to his genitals. His shoes were stripped from him and he was made to walk across broken glass and roofing nails for hundreds of miles through 130 degree temperatures. Angry Jews, Arabs, and Christians lined the road, pelting the atheist rocker with stones and cell phones, and crashing their SUVs into him at high speeds. Around his head they wrapped a crown of barbed wire, and then they said, "heck with it", and wrapped barbed wire around his whole body. Then they threw him off a bridge and made him crawl all the way back up, after which they threw him off again. All the while the fanatics on either side of him cursed him and shouted at him and told him that his vocals were terrible. Brian Voth, cut, bruised, and bleeding, left a trail of red mud behind him as he stumbled along, losing gallon after gallon of blood.

But that was only the beginning, once in Jerusalem…

(Editor's note - We have seen fit to remove approximately fourteen pages of the text describing the inhuman amounts of torture and suffering inflicted upon Mr. Voth. To be quite frank, it was excessive, ridiculous, and ultimately pointless.)

…and then they nuked him, and nuked him again. And the grand interrogator asked, "He has been nuked twice. Is being nuked twice punishment enough?" And the crowd shouted out, "Nay! Nay! He must be nuked a third time! Three times must he be nuked." And so it came to pass that the enemy of all religions was nuked a third time, and there was much rejoicing.

Finally the blasphemer, beaten, nuked, and still nailed to the cross, was confronted with his sins.

"You are hereby accused of being an anti-Semite.", the grand interrogator said as he stood before the angry, shouting crowd. "Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

"I do.", Brian gasped as the crowd quieted down just enough to hear. "I don't have anything against Jews. I admire the intellect, talent, and accomplishments of the Jewish people."

The crowd soften just a little, but Brian, who felt the need to be completely honest, continued, "Sure, I feel that the state of Israel is a little extreme in its policies, but…"

"Silence! You know nothing about suffering!", the grand interrogator bellowed as the crowd looked at the brutalized musician and scratched their heads.

"I mean, after thirty-seven years of fighting terrorism unsuccessfully doesn't it make sense to try a different approach?", the tortured guitarist replied.

"Nonsense! It's working.", the grand interrogator shot back. "We have more land now. We have settlements all across the occupied territories. And look at how many billions of dollars the United States gives us every year. And just take a look at all the sophisticated military hardware that we buy at discounted prices in return for battle-testing them for American defense contractors.", the grand interrogator boasted. "The occupation is working wonderfully."

"So you'd gladly sacrifice some of your own people to suicide bombers so that a few Israelis can get filthy rich?", Brian asked, not for his benefit, but for the benefit of those in the crowd.

"Ding! Ding! The atheist wins a prize.", the grand interrogator mocked. "Now if you would be so kind as to tell us what you meant when you said that Nazi and Jewish ideology were inter-related."

A stir went through the crowd. Everyone was eager to hear what the atheist was about to say.

"Well, in the bible, God told the Jews to exterminate all the non-Jews from the promised land. To commit genocide.", Brian explained. "The Nazis attempted to commit genocide against the Jews in the name of God. That was Hitler's interpretation of his Christian faith, blaming the Jews for killing Christ and being a synagogue of Satan. Now we see the Israelis, some of whom are descendents of Jews who lived through the Holocaust, treating the non-Jews in their lands like second class citizens, denying them human rights, abusing them, evicting them, torturing them, killing them, and carrying out a slow motion ethnic cleansing as part of a brutal occupation."

Brian took a breath and spoke again. "Also, both ideologies have racial purity as a central tenet. For the Nazis it was belonging to the Aryan race. For the Jews it is descending from the twelve tribes of ancient Israel. It seems that an ethnically based conflicts are something that both ideologies share and which have fueled animosity and aggression in the other."

"Bullshit!", the grand interrogator shouted. "We are nothing like the Nazis. They act out of aggression. We act out of self-defense. The Arabs want to destroy us, and they spread lies about Jews to stir up hatred and provoke violence."

"Hey, if you're telling me that Arab leaders are exploiting their people for their own ends you're preaching to the choir.", Brian conceded. "And I'm not going to get into a 'who started it' argument. But listen to yourself. Why do you call them 'The Arabs'? Why do you lump them all together? Why are Israeli Arabs not given the same rights as Jews? Why does a nation that claims to be a democracy have a Star of David on it's flag? Isn't Israel a theocracy based on racial identity?"

"We're just trying to preserve the Jewish character of the nation.", the grand interrogator said unconvincingly. "Still, we act out of self defense. We have the right to defend ourselves from terrorists and our actions, while regrettable, we do to try to stop the cycle of violence. But we are not at all like the Nazis. We're not committing genocide. We're not putting the Arabs into ovens."

"Why are you taking their land away?", Brian asked. "That's not self-defense. Not when you put settlements there. Isn't expanding your borders an aggressive act? Aren't you conquering land to appease the radical Israelis who want a 'Greater Israel'? Isn't it a conflict of interest to claim to want peace while relishing the spoils of war?"

"It's our land!", the grand interrogator cried out. "God gave it to us. It says so in the Torah no matter who was here first. We are acting as agents of the creator. By fighting off the Arabs we are doing the Lord's work."

"Yes.", a member of the crowd spoke up. "All within the state of Israel. Nothing outside the state of Israel. Nothing against the state of Israel."

"We are engaged in a final all out battle between Islamic fundamentalism and Judaism.", added another member of the crowd.

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.", the grand interrogator concluded. "And so you are one of THEM."

The crowd went wild.

"You guys realize that by keeping the cycle of violence going you're proving me right, right?", Brian asked the grand interrogator.

"Sure. You've got some good ideas. You've just got your heart in the wrong place.", the grand interrogator confessed quietly as the crowd chanted for more blood. "Stoke up the anti-Semitism. The Jewish extremists love it. It fills them with the most noble sense of persecution. They're not unlike Christians you know, who want to be like Christ. Deep down all fanatics are pretty much the same."

"I can do the anti-Semitism thing.", Brian offered. "Will it get me out of this?"

"Maybe.", the grand interrogator replied. "Let's see."

The grand interrogator settled the crowd down. Brian cleared his throat.

"Master race, chosen people, what's the difference?", Brian called out.

The crowd screamed with anger.

"Anti-Semite! Anti-Semite!" The crowd chanted.

"That's pretty good.", the grand interrogator admitted.

"And Israel is the Fatherland! Oops, I mean, the Promised Land.", Brian added.

The crowd chanted louder. "Anti-Semite! Anti-Semite!"

"You shall build a Jewish Reich, I mean state, that will last for a thousand years!", Brian called out. "Heil Abraham!"

The crowd couldn't bear to listen to any more. A few members became enraged and pulled out a spear, stabbing Brian in the side and reopening his radical nephrectomy scar.

"Good enough?", Brian asked through clenched teeth.

"Yes.", said the grand interrogator. "But of course, there's no way that I can save you now. You're on your own."

For days Brian hung on the cross slowly dying, while the crowd never ceased its chanting. They wanted to see him die and there was nothing that was going to stop them.

Almost nothing.

Near death and parched from the heat Brian wondered if there was any way that peace could be made in the Middle East. He stared up at the burning sun. Then he was struck with an inspiration.

"I've got it.", Brian exclaimed. "I know how to make peace between an oppressed people and their conquerors."

The crowd booed and jeered but the grand interrogator soon quieted them, wanting to give a dying man a chance to utter his final words. Silence swept over the crowd as all eyes were focused on the man on the cross.

"Casinos!", the excited musician erupted. "Turn all the settlements into casinos! It worked in the US. It can work here too. Have casinos in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and all over the West Bank and Gaza. You'll make millions. Billions. And there will be peace."

The grand interrogator considered the idea. "It could work.", he finally said. "Cut him down."

And so it came to pass that a hundred tacky religiously themed casinos were opened up all across the occupied territories. And the peoples of the region and others from far beyond came to the West Bank and Gaza to experience the showy, glitzy, and gaudy wonders that had been created. And finally there was peace as Hasidic Jews, Muslim extremists, and Born-Again Christians sat side by side, drinking, whoring, and losing money in the name of the one true god who they could all agree upon was real, Mammon.