Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
25, 2004
Steven
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
May
19, 2004
Elizabeth
W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing,
Now
Bill
and Kathleen Christison
The US Can't Win
Vijay
Prashad
For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004
Ray
Hanania
Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.?
Greg
Moses
Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC
Michael
Gillespie
Who is Kenneth deGraffenried?
Josh
Frank
Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry?
Gary
Corseri
Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave
Kevin
Alexander Gray
If Malcolm Were Alive
May
18, 2004
Neve
Gordon
The Gaza Debacle
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Vanessa
Jones
Man on a Leash
Thomas
P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden
Zeynep
Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Kenneth
Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
Website
of the Day
Truth Against Truth
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
May
25, 2004
The
Covert Kingdom
Thy
Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas
By
JOE BAGEANT
Not long ago I pulled my car up alongside
a tiny wooden church in the woods, a stark white frame box my
family built in 1840. And as always, an honest-to-god chill went
through me, for the ancestral ghosts presumably hovering over
the graves there. From the wide open front door the Pentecostal
preacher's message echoed from within the plain wooden walls:
"Thank you Gawd for giving us strawng leaders like President
Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you Lord and guide him in
this battle with Satan's Muslim armies." If I had chosen
to go back down the road a mile or so to the sprawling new Bible
Baptist church---complete with school facilities, professional
sound system and in-house television production---I could have
heard approximately the same exhortation. Usually offered at
the end of a prayer for sons and daughters of members in the
congregation serving in Iraq, it can be heard in any of the thousands
upon thousands of praise temples across our republic.
After a lifetime of identity
conflict, I have come to accept that, blood-wise, if not politically
or spiritually, these are my people. And as a leftist it is very
clear to me these days why urban liberals not only fail to understand
these people, but do not even know they exist, other than as
some general lump of ignorant, intolerant voters called "the
religious right," or the "Christian Right," or
"neocon Christians." But until progressives come to
understand what these people read, hear, are told and deeply
believe, we cannot understand American politics, much less be
effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's inherent cultural
isolation, it is nearly impossible for most enlightened Americans
to imagine, in honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans
believe, let alone understand why we should all care.
For liberals to examine the
current fundamentalist phenomenon in America is accept some hard
truths. For starters, we libs are even more embattled than most
of us choose to believe. Any significant liberal and progressive
support is limited to a few urban pockets on each coast and along
the upper edge of the Midwestern tier states. Most of the rest
of the nation, the much vaunted heartland, is the dominion of
the conservative and charismatic Christian. Turf-wise, it's pretty
much their country, which is to say it presently belongs to George
W. Bush for some valid reasons. Remember: He did not have to
steal the entire election, just a little piece of it in Florida.
Evangelical born-again Christians of one stripe or another were
then, and are now, 40% of the electorate, and they support Bush
3-1. And as long as their clergy and their worst instincts tell
them to, they will keep on voting for him, or someone like him,
regardless of what we view as his arrogant folly and sub-intelligence.
Forget about changing their minds. These Christians do not read
the same books we do, they do not get their information from
anything remotely resembling reasonably balanced sources, and
in fact, consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of
porn and the Devil's lies. Given how fundamentalists see the
modern world, they may as well be living in Iraq or Syria, with
whom they share approximately the same Bronze Age religious tenets.
They believe in God, Rumsfeld's Holy War and their absolute duty
as God's chosen nation to kick Muslim ass up one side and down
the other. In other words, just because millions of Christians
appear to be dangerously nuts does not mean they are marginal.
Having been born into a Southern
Pentecostal/Baptist family of many generations, and living in
this fundamentalist social landscape means that I gaze into the
maw of neocon Christianity daily. Hell, sometimes hourly. My
brother is a fundamentalist preacher, as are a couple of my nephews,
as were many of my ancestors going back to god-knows-when. My
entire family is born-again; their lives are completely focused
inside their own religious community, and on the time when Jesus
returns to earth---Armageddon and The Rapture.
Only another liberal born into
a fundamentalist clan can understand what a strange, sometimes
downright hellish family circumstance it is---how such a family
can love you deeply, yet despise everything you believe in, see
you as a humanist instrument of Satan, and still be right there
for you when your back goes out or a divorce shatters your life.
As a socialist and a half-assed lefty activist, obviously I
do not find much conversational fat to chew around the Thanksgiving
table. Politically and spiritually, we may be said to be dire
enemies. Love and loathing coexist side by side. There is talk,
but no communication. In fact, there are times when it all has
science fiction overtonestimes when it seems we are speaking
to one another through an unearthly veil, wherein each party
knows it is speaking to an alien. There is a sort of high eerie
mental whine in the air. This is the sound of mutually incomprehensible
worlds hurtling toward destiny, passing with great psychological
friction, obvious to all, yet acknowledged by none.
Between such times, I wait rather anxiously and strive for change,
for relief from what feels like an increased stifling of personal
liberty, beauty, art, and self-realization in America. They wait
in spooky calmness for Jesus. They believe that, until Jesus
does arrive, our "satanic humanist state and federal legal
systems" should be replaced with pure "Biblical Law."
This belief is called Christian Reconstructionism. Though it
has always been around in some form, it began expanding rapidly
about 1973, with the publication of R. J. Rushdoony's, Institutes
of Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982).
Time out please In a nod toward
fairness and tolerance---begging the question of whether liberals
are required to tolerate the intolerant---I will say this: Fundamentalists
are "good people." In daily life, they are warm-hearted
and generous to a fault. They live with feet on the ground (albeit
with eyes cast heavenward) and with genuine love and concern
for their neighbors. After spending 30 years in progressive western
cities such as Boulder, Colorado and Eugene, Oregon, I would
have to say that conservative Christians actually do what liberals
usually only talk about. They visit the sick and the elderly,
give generously of their time and money to help those in need,
and put unimaginable amounts of love and energy into their families,
even as Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh blare in the background.
Their good works extend internationally-were it not for American
Christians, there would be little health care on the African
continent and other similar places. OK, that's the best I can
do in showing due respect for the extreme Christian Right. Now
to get back to the Christian Reconstructionists...
Establishing
a Savage Eden
Christian Reconstruction is
blunt stuff, hard and unforgiving as a gravestone.
Capital punishment, central
to the Reconstructionist ideal, calls for the death penalty in
a wide range of crimes, including abandonment of the faith, blasphemy,
heresy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, sodomy, homosexuality,
striking a parent, and ''unchastity before marriage'' (but for
women only.) Biblically correct methods of execution include
stoning, the sword, hanging, and burning. Stoning is preferred,
according to Gary North, the self-styled Reconstructionist economist,
because stones are plentiful and cheap. Biblical Law would also
eliminate labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.
Leading Reconstruction theologian David Chilton declares, "The
Christian goal for the world is the universal development of
Biblical theocratic republics" Incidentally, said Republic
of Jesus would not only be a legal hell, but an ecological one
as well---Reconstructionist doctrine calls for the scrapping
of environmental protection of all kinds, because there will
be no need for this planet earth once The Rapture occurs. You
may not have heard of Rushdoony or Chilton or North, but taken
either separately or together, they have directly and indirectly
influenced far more contemporary American minds than Noam Chomsky,
Gore Vidal and Howard Zinn combined.
A moreover covert movement,
although slightly more public of late, Christian Reconstructionism
and Dominionism have for decades exerted one hell of an influence
through its scores of books, publications and classes taught
in colleges and universities. Over the past 30 years their doctrine
has permeated not only the religious right, but mainstream churches
as well, via the charismatic movement. The radical Christian
right's impact on politics and religion in this nation has been
massive, with many mainstream churches pushed rightward by its
pervasiveness without even knowing it. Clearly the Methodist
church down the street from my house does not understand what
it has become. Other mainstream churches with more progressive
leadership, simply flinch and bow to the radicals at every turn.
They have to, if they want to retain members these days. Further
complicating matters is that leading Recoconstruction thinkers,
along with their fellow travelers, the Dominionists, are all
but invisible to non-fundamentalist America. (I will spare
you the agony of the endless doctrinal hair-splitting that comes
with making fundamentalist distinctions of any sort---I would
not do that to a dog. But if you are disposed toward self-punishment,
you can take it upon yourself to learn the differences between
Dominionism, Pretribulationism, Midtribulationism, and Posttribulationism,
Premillennialism, Millennialism I recommend the writings of the
British author and scholar George Monbiot, who has put the entire
maddening scheme of it all together---corporate implications,
governmental and psychological meaning---in a couple of excellent
books.)
Fundamentalists such as my
family have no idea how thoroughly they have been orchestrated
by agenda-driven Christian media and other innovations of the
past few decades. They probably would not care now, even if they
knew. Like most of their tribe (dare we say class, in a nation
that so vehemently denies it has a class system?) they want to
embrace some simple foundational truth that will rationalize
all the conflict and confusion of a postmodern world. Some handbook
that will neatly explain everything, make all their difficult
decisions for them. And among these classic American citizens,
prone toward religious zealotry since the Great Awakening of
the 18th Century, what rock could appear more dependable upon
which to cling than the infallible Holy Bible? From there it
was a short step for Christian Dominionist leaders to conclude
that such magnificent infallibility should be enforced upon all
other people, in the same spirit as the Catholic Spanish Conquistadors
or the Arab Muslim Moors before them. It's an old, old story,
a brutal one mankind cannot seem to shake.
Christian Reconstruction and
Dominionist strategists make clear in their writings that homeschooling
and Christian academies have been and continue to create the
Rightist Christian cadres of the future, enabling them to place
ever-increasing numbers of believers in positions of governmental
influence. The training of Christian cadres is far more sophisticated
than the average liberal realizes. There now stretches a network
of dozens of campuses across the nation, each with its strange
cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people, most of them
clones of Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
But how many outsiders know the depth and specificity of political
indoctrination in these schools? For example, Patrick Henry College
in Purcellville, Virginia, a college exclusively for Christian
homeschoolers, offers programs in strategic government intelligence,
legal training and foreign policy, all with a strict, Bible-based
"Christian worldview." Patrick Henry is so heavily
funded by the Christian right it can offer classes below cost.
In the Bush administration, seven percent of all internships
are handed out to Patrick Henry students, along with many others
distributed among similar religious rightist colleges. The Bush
administration also recruits from the faculties of these schools,
i.e. the appointments of right-wing Christian activist Kay Coles
James, former dean of the Pat Robertson School of government,
as director of the U.S. office of personnel. What better position
than the personnel office from which to recruit more fundamentalists?
Scratch any of these supposed academics and you will find a Christian
zealot. I know because I have made the mistake of inviting a
few of these folks to cocktail parties. One university department
head told me he is moving to rural Mississippi where he can better
recreate the lifestyle of the antebellum South, and its "Confederate
Christian values." It gets real strange real quick.
Lest the these Christians be
underestimated, remember that it was their strategists whose
"stealth ideology" managed the takeover of the Republican
Party in the early 1990s. That takeover now looks mild in light
of today's neocon Christian implantations in the White House,
the Pentagon and the Supreme Court and other federal entities.
As much as liberals screech in protest, few understand the depth
and breadth of the Rightist Christian takeover underway. They
catch the scent but never behold the beast itself. Yesterday
I heard a liberal Washington-based political pundit on NPR say
the Radical Christian right's local and regional political action
peak was a past fixture of the Reagan era. I laughed out loud
(it was a bitter laugh) and wondered if he had ever driven 20
miles eastward on U.S. Route 50 into the suburbs of Maryland,
Virginia or West Virginia. The fellow on NPR was a perfect example
of the need for liberal pundits to get their heads out of their
asses, get outside the city, quit cruising the Internet and meet
some Americans who do not mirror their own humanist educations
and backgrounds.
If they did, they would grasp
the importance The Rapture has taken on in American national
and international politics. Despite the media's shallow interpretation
of The Rapture's significance, it is a hell of a lot more than
just a couple hundred million Left Behind books sold.
The most significant thing about the Left Behind series
is that, although they are classified as "fiction,"
most fundamentalist readers I know accept the series as an absolute
reality soon coming to a godless planet near you. It helps to
understand that everything is literal in the Fundamentalist voter
universe.
I'll Fly
Away, Oh Lordy (But you won't.)
Yes, when The Rapture comes
Christians with the right credentials will fly away. But you
and I, dear reader, will probably be among those who suffer a
thousand-year plague of boils. So stock up on antibiotics, because
according to the "Rapture Index" it is damned near
here. See for yourself at http://www.raptureready.com.
Part gimmick, part fanatical obsession, the index is a compilation
of such things as floods, interest rates, oil prices, global
turmoil As I write this the index stands at 144, just one point
below critical mass, when people like us will be smitten under
a sky filled with deliriously happy naked flying Christians.
But to blow The Rapture off
as amusing-if-scary fantasy is not being honest on my part. Cheap
glibness has always been my vice, so I must say this: Personally,
I've lived with The Rapture as the psychologically imprinted
backdrop of my entire life. In fact, my own father believed in
it until the day he died, and the last time I saw him alive we
talked about The Rapture. And when he asked me, "Will you
be saved?" Will you be there with me on Canaan's shore after
The Rapture?" I was forced to feign belief in it to give
a dying man inner solace. But that was the spiritual stuff of
families, and living and dying, religion in its rightful place,
the way it is supposed to be, personal and intimate---not political.
Thus, until the advent of the of the new radical Christian influence,
I'd certainly never heard The Rapture spoken about in the context
of a Texan being selected by God to prepare its way.
Now however, this apocalyptic
belief, yearning really, drives an American Christian polity
in the service of a grave and unnerving agenda. The psuedo-scriptural
has become an apocalyptic game plan for earthly political action:
To wit, the messiah can only return to earth after an apocalypse
in Israel called Armageddon, which the fundamentalists are promoting
with all their power so that The Rapture can take place. The
first requirement was establishment of the state of Israel. Done.
The next is Israel's occupation of the Middle East as a return
of its "Biblical lands," which in the radical Christian
scheme of things, means more wars. These Christian conservatives
believe peace cannot ever lead to The Rapture, and indeed impedes
the 1,000 year Reign of Christ. So anyone promoting peace is
an enemy, a tool of Satan, hence the fundamentalist support for
any and all wars Middle Eastern, in which their own kids die
a death often viewed by Christian parents as a holy martyrdom
of its own kind. "He (or she) died protecting this country's
Christian values." One hears it over and over from parents
of those killed.
The final scenario of the Rapture has the "saved" Christians
settling onto a cloud after the long float upward, from whence
they watch a Rambo Jesus wipe out the remnants of the human race.
Then in a mop-up operation by God, the Jews are also annihilated,
excepting a few who convert to Christianity. The Messiah returns
to earth. End of story. Incidentally, the Muslim version, I was
surprised to learn recently, is almost exactly the same, but
with Muslims doing the cloud-sitting.
If we are lucky as a nation,
this period in American history will be remembered as just another
very dark time we managed to get through. Otherwise, one shudders
to think of the logical outcome. No wonder the left is depressed.
Meanwhile, our best thinkers on the left ask us to consider our
perpetual U.S. imperial war as a fascist, military/corporate
war, and indeed it is that too. But tens of millions of hardworking,
earnest American Christians see it as far more than that. They
see a war against all that is un-Biblical, the goal of which
is complete world conquest, or put in Christian terminology,
"dominion." They will have no less than the "inevitable
victory God has promised his new chosen people," according
to the Recon masters of the covert kingdom. Screw the Jews, they
blew their chance. If perpetual war is what it will take, then
let it be perpetual. After all, perpetual war is exactly what
the Bible promised. Like it or not, this is the reality (or prevailing
unreality) with which we are faced. The 2004 elections, regardless
of outcome, will not change that. Nor will it necessarily bring
ever-tolerant liberals to openly acknowledge what is truly happening
in this country, the thing that has been building for a long,
long time---a holy war, a covert Christian jihad for control
of America and the entire world. Millions of Americans are under
the spell of an extraordinarily dangerous mass psychosis.
Pardon me, but religious tolerance be damned. Somebody had to
say it.
Joe Bageant is a senior editor at the Primedia
History Group and writes from Winchester, Virginia. He may be
contacted at bageantjb@netscape.net.
Weekend Edition
Features for May 22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
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