[kj] OT: Christian twats

nicholas fitzpatrick gasw30 at hotmail.com
Thu Apr 29 04:40:51 EDT 2004


Apparently....



>>>To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, 
>>>go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power
US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 20 2004
The Guardian


To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first 
understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening 
there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican 
party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions 
made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.

The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: 
homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to 
process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should 
be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation 
tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric 
fences. Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a 
small state 7,000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that 
the "screaming and near fist fights" began.

I don't know what the original motion said, but apparently it was "watered 
down significantly" as a result of the shouting match. The motion they 
adopted stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West 
Bank, that Arab states should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from 
Palestine, and that Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to 
eliminate terrorism. Good to see that the extremists didn't prevail then.

But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a 
state which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? 
The explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some 
difficulty in taking it seriously.

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an 
extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled 
together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what 
appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when 
certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the 
establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of 
the rest of its "biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the 
rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the 
Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be 
deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the 
valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, 
and the Messiah will return to Earth.

What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that 
before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe 
what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to 
heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit 
at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best 
seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, 
sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which 
follow.

The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means 
staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians 
were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish 
settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for 
Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of 
Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the 
antichrist turn out to be.

The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their 
efforts. The antichrist is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi 
Annan, Javier Solana, Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi. 
The Wal-Mart corporation is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), 
because it wants to radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the 
Mark of the Beast.

By clicking on www.raptureready.com, you can discover how close you might be 
to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should take note that 
the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point below the critical 
threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists. Beast 
Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the maximum five 
points (the EU is debat ing its constitution, there was a freak hurricane in 
the south Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its leaders), 
but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate decline 
in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the antichrist (both of 
which score only two).

We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their 
beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters 
believe that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which 
subscribe to these teachings. A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure 
included 33% of Republicans. The best-selling contemporary books in the US 
are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series, which provide what is usually 
described as a "fictionalised" account of the Rapture (this, apparently, 
distinguishes it from the other one), with plenty of dripping details about 
what will happen to the rest of us. The people who believe all this don't 
believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death.

And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, 
the attorney general, is a true believer, so are several prominent senators 
and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the 
co-author of the marvellously named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing 
campaign finance reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset 
that "there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking".

So here we have a major political constituency - representing much of the 
current president's core vote - in the most powerful nation on Earth, which 
is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion 
of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels 
"which are bound in the great river Euphrates" will be released "to slay the 
third part of men". They batter down the doors of the White House as soon as 
its support for Israel wavers: when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his 
tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian 
fundamentalists, and never mentioned the matter again.

The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments 
stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle 
East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter 
the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a 
domestic matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a 
conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of 
God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli 
aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to 
listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.

· George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a Manifesto for a New World 
Order is now published in paperback

www.monbiot.com

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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