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Deep
Throat Returns: |
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Fear of God (and
I was happy when George W. Bush won the electoral college vote in 2000. I was impressed by his late-in-life conversion from alcoholic wanderer to born-again Christian. Two years ago, I frequently defended his questionable military record, his poor business record and his lackluster Governor’s record, even his diction and delivery. I thought it was a good thing that he was in the driver’s seat of the world’s most powerful military machine. But I’ve been
studying his neo-conservative agenda, sometimes called “muscular
Wilsonianism.” I’ve been
examining political alliances between the Christian Right who see
Forging pre-emptive war, forcibly tinkering with other countries “for their own good,” and groupthink reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition – this evolution of the American political persona is not academic. It is not part of an historical pattern or cycle. It is emotional, mystical and pseudo-religious. The emotionalism of this new American foreign policy is real. But a significant and expensive part of our foreign policy is not realism, nor is it realistic. It is simple religious mysticism. And anyone who challenges this mystical foreign policy is instantly labeled an enemy of God, a usurper of God’s will. Whether students of the Old Testament, or both the Old and New, the neo-cons pushing Armageddon have also decided that U.S. foreign policy will be even more righteous and certainly more expedient if it ignores many of the Ten Commandments, and all of the Beatitudes. But to make up for those omissions, these holy rollers have fully embraced the Book of Revelations! As we all know, Revelations is a lot more colorful and interesting and compelling than “Thou shalt not steal” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” Skipping the tough and unhelpful stuff like faith, hope and charity, onward to Revelations, we see that the end times are near. And our Christian soldiers (all-volunteered or stop-lossed into submission) are marching to make it happen. When the Rapture (the instant saving of a chosen few) occurs, those “left behind” on earth will have a choice. Convert to Protestant Christianity, or basically suffer and die. The way George W. Bush and a whole lot of policy-makers in Washington these days read the story, it ain’t exactly going to be the Muslims and Hindus or even Jews and Catholics who are gonna be picked up the first time. Skip the Scripture. You can read all about it in the very popular Left Behind series of novels by the evangelical Tim LaHaye and his writer buddy Jerry Jenkins. I mean, even some good Christians are going to be left behind. But in the hierarchy of righteous goodness, of course, you can see there is only one answer. Convert or die. (Actually, it does have historical precedence. Crusades, anyone?) Now – this campaign
into Today, it is
truly sacrilegious to check whether the U.S. Constitution has anything
to say about the process of going to pre-emptive -- possibly nuclear
-- war with a small third world country of 23 million poor people,
who aren’t even Communist! I
mean, at least in Muscular Wilsonianism is a good name for Bush’s neo-conservative foreign policy. Like Bush, Wilson was overwhelmingly religiously motivated, proved willing to kill lots of people for world betterment and their own damn good, and he understood and used Orwellian concepts like “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” And like Wilson,
Bush is a Bill of Rights-suppressing, big-spending, debt-loving,
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