AlterNet this morning provided some very, very interesting and cogent pieces. Let me quote from this piece which provides an intriguing profile of Robert Novak, the Right's "Prince of Darkness:"
"He is not without the charm that serves to temper his reputation as the 'Prince of Darkness.' ('I think he gave himself that nickname,' one of his colleagues later told me.) But it's a forced charm – I've read most of Novak's lines in previous profiles of the guy. I'm reminded of the description of Novak, sometimes attributed to Michael Kinsley, which a number of sources volunteered: 'Beneath the asshole is a very decent guy, and beneath the very decent guy is an asshole." I am not under the illusion that he will reveal some new or interesting anecdote during our talk, and he is not under the illusion that I will press him on anything he hasn't already heard. At age 73, Novak has dealt with much tougher challenges than being profiled by a small-circulation political magazine.'"
Then, from Bill Moyers (who I admire immensely as a writer, as a thinker) AlterNet provided this piece which presented Moyers' acceptance speech for the Harvard Medical School's annual Global Environmental Citizen Award.
If you can't read the whole piece, please read these excerpts:
"As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge – to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
"Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'
"Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true – one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right – the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.
"...As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election – 231 legislators in total – more since the election – are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: 'the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that i will send a famine in the land.' He seemed to be relishing the thought.
"And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, 'to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?'
"...Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's providential history. You'll find there these words: 'the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece.' However, '[t]he Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in god's earth... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people.' No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, 'Onward Christian Soldiers.' He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics."
Final thoughts: Evangelical Christians have, since Reagan, done their homework well. They've molded a political power base that is powerful, potent and which cannot be ignorned by politicians ... Democrats as well as Repbulicans. But, it is quite scary to understand that a whole lot of good and decent folks, these Evangelical Christians, believe profoundly that the destruction of the earth's environment is part of God's plan and, therefore, acceptable, inevitable, divinely inspired.
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." This from the Bill Moyers in the above piece.
God Bless America.
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