The rise to power of the radical religious right in America has been a terrifying spectacle to watch. Most of the population goes about their daily lives completely oblivious to the growing malignancy of this dangerous tumor on the body of a secular democratic society that incrementally finds itself becoming less of both. This is the first of a series of posts over the coming months that I am going to use to take a good hard look at what is potentially the greatest threat that this country has ever faced and has the potential to metastasize into something malignantly evil that will change the lives of Americans forever in a way that is only too evident when reviewing history as well as theocratic regimes that are in existence elsewhere in the world today.
There is something fundamentally wrong on the most basic of levels with a society in which much of the raw political power rests within a fanatical segment that rejects any reality other than the one that they have been misled and indoctrinated into being truth. These people believe that the Earth is only in the neighborhood of 4,000 years old despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise, they believe that the Grand Canyon was created by the same flood in which Noah once cruised around for forty days and forty nights in a giant wooden ark filled with animals (can you imagine the stench?) and that they will one day be lifted out of their clothes and transported en masse to the heavens where they will sit at the right hand of God himself to watch the rest us be tortured, torn to bits and to suffer unspeakable acts of violence along with plagues and pestilence.
It is a very dangerous group that is already so completely delusional (check the DSM IV) that they find it easy to swallow lies that grow bigger and more brazen as the false prophets who call their cadence rise to national prominence, positions of influence and celebrity in their own right. They believe that God chose George W. Bush to rule and to fight a holy crusade against Islamofascism (what a bogus word but the linguists in the GOP had to appropriate the word fascism for themselves lest a connection be made to their own means of true fascist rule and the leaders and thinkers who champion it) and that the founders of the United States had every intention of creating a government more along the ideological underpinnings of Cotton Mather rather than of Thomas Jefferson.
They also are led to believe in the nefarious threat of the dreaded ‘homosexual agenda’ and that gay marriage is such a grave threat to the very existence to their family and their institutions that they can always be counted on to march to the polls and to vote against their own self interests as well as the best interests of their very children, often preferring to send them to bed cold and hungry so that total war can be waged on science, tolerance, liberty and the progressive society that they so vehemently deplore. It is unfortunate that their children will likely never understand the damage that is being done to them by their parents who are under the sway of the snake handlers for they will have been reduced to borderline retarded drones who advocate fascism and renounce science while having to view history through a kaleidoscope due to the regressive home schooling that they have received due to the movement’s pathological hatred and shunning of public education.
This is exactly why they will go hook, line and sinker for the poison bait of the latest and greatest Joseph Goebbels style television extravaganza called Darwin’s Deadly Legacy that makes the astounding claim that it was Darwin’s theory of evolution that served as the inspiration for the demonic monster Adolph Hitler and effectively served as the blueprint for the Holocaust. This turgid, fallacious piece of folderol was delivered from on high to the masses over the weekend (and also available on DVD or book for any of the semi-literate miscreants who have been weaned on Timothy LaHaye’s pulp fiction trash) via the Coral Ridge Ministries high-tech electronic pulpit featuring frothing Christian Reconstruction honcho and resident lunatic Dr. James Kennedy who has long been training and mobilizing his forces for an overthrow of the existing United States government to install a theocratic new order.
To promote this leap of revisionist history and logic and to apply it to further eroding faith in the real Christ Kennedy has even retained the services of that Godless whore herself: Ann Coulter. She who is the object of depraved sexual fantasies to millions of frustrated white male losers despite looking more like a haggard, horse-faced, crack whore (at least to me) will appear in Darwin’s Deadly Legacy which is being heavily promoted in the sinister realms of the alternative phony Christian media where she can denounce liberals until her head begins to spin in circles and produce torrents of pea soup green colored vomit. Kennedy, his evil ministry and their Republican servants in the Rove propaganda shop are definitely hoping for the crossover appeal that the appearance of the demented harlot of hatred will generate.
And while I am on the subject of screeching harpies it was at the same viper filled snakepit of the Coral Ridge Ministries’ high profile Reclaiming America for Christ orgy of intolerance where none other than the American Jezebel Katherine Harris attempted to drum up support for her flagging Senate campaign back before it became such an embarassing lost cause unless she can engineer another stolen election come November. Now she has gone totally off the deep end in her shameful pandering to the knuckle dragging regressives as is evident in her recent comments that the separation of church and state was “a lie”. Religion, much like patriotism is certainly the last refuge of scoundrels and Harris upping of her demagoguery in an attempt to pander to the same segment of rubber fetus waving, foam decalogue totin’, rapture watching parasites who leeched onto Terri Schiavo reeks of desperation as much as it reeks of the pungeant scent of the horseshit in the stables on the animal deck of Noah’s Ark.
The theocrats have had a colossal bug up their asses ever since the junk science of Intelligent Design was exposed as the Trojan Horse for good old fashioned fire and brimstone style creationism that it truly is. These bible thumping, Jesus juicing yahoos never have been able to get over that day eight decades and change ago when Clarence Darrow made a mockery out of William Jennings Bryan in a Tennessee court of law and exposed the superstitions of simpletons as so much drivel. The great columnist H.L. Mencken wrote extensively on the trial and I would strongly recommend his classic stories on this historic period that are available at this website. The spineless media would never allow for a Mencken today or for that matter any outspoken individualist voice that would dare speak out against a vicious bloc of activist consumers whose massive, well financed organization and their bloodthirsty relish in bringing down the economic terrorism of targeted boycotts and individualized harassment allow it to continue to conspire largely in secrecy.
And that is a great albeit very short analysis by a die hard skeptic, a journalistic giant and a man whose eloquent cynicism is sadly missing in these darkest of all times. And what truly is behind that all consuming hatred that burns as incandescently hot as a funeral pyre for post-Enlightenment society?
Present day fundamentalist political movement based ‘Christianity’ is a virulent strain of social virus, determined to infect every organ within the body politic and the power brokers who are behind this movement have made an astonishing amount of progress in laying out and executing a very well planned and financed agenda. It is an agenda that has been enormously successful due to their ability to work with other groups with seemingly conflicting interests that are able to assist the theocrats in bringing about their ultimate goals:
Military Industrial Complex War Profiteers: The ability to bring about the war that is necessary to kick off Armageddon as well as the crusade to ‘Christianize’ the globe while waging endless against Muslims and Islam. It keeps arms shipments flowing and defense industry stocks up (not to mention corrupt members of Congress in office) and the trading of money for blood is as institutionalized and entrenched as it has ever been. The GWOT makes for very, very good business.
The Israeli Lobby: Christian Zionists need partners in their quest to unify the Holy Land in preparation for the return of Christ, never mind that in order to fulfill their fever dream prophecy that the Jews will have to either convert or die. This symbiotic relationship is tolerated and even encouraged by many hard core Israelis and their domestic agents who wish to gain sufficient regional dominance and ‘Liebensraum’ by using American as a Golem with which to smite Iran and Syria.
The Neo Cons: For their staunch support of the state of Israel over the best interests of the USA as well as their ability to influence foreign policy to fulfill the goals of crusade and war. CUFI (Christians United For Israel) and the crazed Pastor John Hagee who is the author of ‘The Jerusalem Countdown’ and who is outspoken in his intent to work to bring about a conflagration that will jump start the apocalypse has been a very useful tool for the neocons and hard core Christian Zionists as he organizes and leads the cheering for what would be a catastrophic escalation of violence in an attack on Iran.
Wall Street Uber-Capitalists: Despite all of the rhetoric of Christ being king even God himself knows that in this society that the true king is cash. The ability of the megachurches to mobilize voters keeps politicians friendly to corporatism in office.
The Wealthy Elite: As with the looters of Wall Street these people benefit financially from having a savage, Social Darwinist, tax slashing beast of a government in power. Many may have hold their nose while supporting the theocrats but as the saying goes “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and the enemy is progressive government and liberal society. To the elites who tolerate these people so as to personally profit I offer one word of advice and that is simply beware. Beware because when you stoke the fires of hatred in others and nurture their ignorance so as to gain you are only empowering those who one day will become powerful enough to turn on you as well. The ignorance of the red state evangelical movement only ensures one thing, that on the day that your common enemy is neutralized and YOU become the next enemy there will be no reasoning with the hordes that will be laying siege to your gated communities.
Through mutually beneficial alliances the ideologues have been able to build a coalition that has effectively seized control of the American political system. The rise in power of the theocrats has coincided with the spread of neo-liberal, Social Darwinist ‘free-market’ capitalism that exploits the most poverty-stricken countries of the third world, the same impoverished and downtrodden masses that Christ himself championed. The ascension to the pinnacle of power of the American ayatollahs and their armies of converts has not surprisingly coincided with the rise of the empire of satellite television and the ability to mass disseminate propaganda in their alleged mission to spread the message of Christ. This wonder working power has instead been used to not only transform the message to be more capitalist friendly by eliminating the emphasis of all of that bothersome stuff about ministering to the poor and downtrodden but to co-opt Jesus as a brand name for theocratic moneychangers. You see, in post-Reagan, Bushist America they are the ones who have run his longhaired liberal ass out of the temple.
The electronic pulpit and the application of sophisticated business marketing techniques to Christianity has allowed the cash spigot to be opened with millions of television viewers being implored to give and give generously to the of the temples of the modern Sadducees and Pharisees who were all to willing to at least partly forsake the gospels of Christ for the gospels of the money changers like the Wall Street Journal, the Gideon’s trumpet of the ruinous globalist economics that are so devastating to the hopes of billions but as the Roman Catholic church has repeatedly proven through history any attrocity no matter how heinous or cruel can be justified if it is rubber stamped by the almighty.
The Republican party has been particularly successful in using religion to its advantage by gene splicing it with southern hostility, fear and outright bigotry. There are those who actually have been led to believe that George W. Bush is God’s man in the White House and the votes of thousands of blacks that put him in office magically disappeared through a divine miracle. The RNC and Karl Rove have so effictively used this to ensure one party rule for the long term future that irreversible damage to the system is imminent. The monster that the Rove led subliminal message machine has midwifed is growing stronger and straining against it’s bonds, all of the phony and carefully constructed speeches laced with religious references that would escape the cognitive abilities of the unindoctrinated have hit home with their intended audience and they are growing stronger by the day. With all monsters they also become more venomous, militant and willing to do whatever it takes to prepare for the rapture and kingdom come, the biggest lie they say that the devil ever told is that he didn’t exist but that whopper is topped by the lie that our domestic ‘Christian’ extremism is any different than the militant Islamic extremism that resulted in 9/11 and never ending war.
Here is a quote from the highly influential Republican radical cleric Pat Robertson:
If you believe that this is nothing other than bombastic rhetoric on my part then I would highly suggest that you take a good look at their ideology as espoused in writings, radio programs and rains down from the pulpits their flag-draped megachurches and the filth that emanates from the Coral Ridge Ministries is a damned good place to start. Just as ‘Intelligent Design’ has lost some degree of credence of late this very dangerous piece of propaganda is nothing more but the same re launching of a failed product with new packaging and slick public relations. This is the proven formula in a land of mindless consumerism ruled by cheesemongers and mean spirited fanatics.
Creationism wrapped in Nazism should be a perfect bookend to the anti-Semitism that is so often pinned on Iran as justification for the escalation of the war and the rallying of support for a deluge of fire from the skies above Tehran to kick off the Armageddon that is so lusted and hungered for by so many.
Posted by Donn Marten 
Bahoowah 