2005-03-01

Editorial

In a Democracy there’s always a Choice

The Commentary by Bill Moyers in Issue 3 of this journal weighs continually on my mind. I just can’t let it go.

That there are millions of American religious ideologues so wrapped up in a literal interpretation of the bible that they would be willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of their compatriots for their own salvation is mind boggling.

Apparently anything goes for these folks, many of whom believe in something called the “Rapture Index,” a scale indicating the closeness “we” now are to Armageddon. According to Moyers, the index is now at 144 and a reading of 145 is the big event. Then, “once Israel has occupied the rest of its ‘biblical lands,’ legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow .” And, according to Moyers, forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress apparently believe this stuff because they earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups.

I suspect that if you are reading this, you are a rational, caring person who feels that you have a stake in democracy, that you love your country, both in its physical and socio-political aspects, though you may differ from others in the details of what you like and dislike, and that you’d prefer not to be lifted out of your clothes and deposited naked next to the right hand of god to watch the rest of your neighbors being plagued with frogs and locusts.

But doesn’t it pique your curiosity just enough to make you want to know who these messianic loonies are? I mean, in terms of people whom you know personally? The apparent urgency of these folks to achieve the sheer nirvana of watching others being plagued might color their daily actions, don’t you think? Your doctor, your dentist, your kid’s teachers, the plumber, the stock broker, your senators and representatives, hell, your president and Dick Cheney and Rummie and Condie and Karl the exploiter– all hell bent on getting that Rapture Index to 145 is a bit unsettling, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, back here in Massachusetts, our Governor Mitt Romney is in Utah, at this writing, already campaigning for the presidency in 2008. After demonstrating to all his deep concern for the well being of his Massachusetts constituents by bragging that he has fired more state employees than any other state in the Union in order to bring fiscal order to the Commonwealth, the Mitton made the rather unusually broad-brush statement that by Massachusetts sanctioning gay marriages, America has indicated to the rest of the world that it has no regard for the institutions of Family and Marriage. That’s what half the folks in this country like to hear and Mitt is tuned into that.

This from the man whose Republican cohorts in Washington have caused untold, irreparable damage to thousands of families in Iraq and the United States by pursuing an illegal war based on lies and deception that killed and maimed members of those families. For those families, Armageddon has already arrived.

Perhaps the Iraq war was all part of the same loony plan. Instigate turmoil. Get the emotions of the people stirred up; fear in half of them and glorious hope that Armageddon is very near in the other half. Fear of dying for one half versus the honor and the power and the glory forever, Amen, of sitting bare-assed on God’s right hand and watching them die.

In a democracy there’s always a choice.

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You may find the following short film to be of interest, and, possibly, of relevance to the above discourse.

It is called “No Tyrant Can Stand Forever."

Its message: “Lest we forget the crimes, the pain, the death!

Bring These People To Justice Now!”

It came from Tom’s fine website, The Information Clearing House.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8159.htm