- Imagine a fundamentalist tent-meeting somewhere on the
dusty plains of Oklahoma or Texas without the Devil? a spluttering preacher
at the pulpit with nothing about which to shout and frighten people? Preaching
the actual teachings of Jesus - so far as we know them, about peace and
toleration - wouldn't cover rental payments on the tent and electric organ.
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- That little thought-experiment offers genuine insight
into the nature of American fundamentalism as well as insight into the
terrible new era of perpetual war ushered in by that fine Christian gentleman,
George Bush.
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- There is little doubt that the nature of a person's religious
universe shapes and orders his or her understanding of the physical one.
We know the Catholic church for centuries fought scientific discovery,
certain that questioning ancient preconceptions about nature also questioned
aspects of the supernatural. This way of looking at things continues into
the twenty-first century, especially in the gulag of creepy places that
is George Bush's America, places where they discuss topics like the Mark
of the Beast in hushed tones.
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- It was that sly, clever Voltaire who declared, "If
there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him." A slight
altering of his words tailors them to the American experience. Simply remove
the word God and put Devil in its place, for, although America is sometimes
called a God-fearing nation, Devil-fearing is nearer the truth.
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- For many years, America enjoyed the blessing of having
Communism against which to rage and threaten. It made for a balanced, harmonious
universe: America as God's Kingdom, ready with sword and buckler to defeat
the Evil One, and all those other nations out there providing an unsaved
mob to fill America's tent and contribute to the mighty battle.
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- Communism as Evil One played to rave reviews for decades,
but all good things do come to an end, including the planet itself if you
embrace the tortured, perhaps psychotic, visions of the Book of Revelation.
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- America's new Official Evil One is a little difficult
to define, but some ambiguity likely serves the cause well. After all,
those Americans who believe in speaking in tongues, as does the current
Attorney General of the United States, don't specify the languages. Any
babble will do. It is clear, however, that America's new Great Awakening
has to do with Islam and people wearing strange headgear. In the humble,
but direct, language of places like the Midwest and Texas, it's about turban-heads.
Unlike godless Communists, this newly discovered slithering mass of evil
believes in God, but it might just as well not since it calls him by the
wrong name and reads the wrong holy book.
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- Well, burning people alive was a specialty of the competing
churches in Europe after the Reformation, a charming custom that Puritans
brought to the land that would become America. The practice has gone through
many changes and refinements, and it is jealously retained by America's
Hi-tech Army of Roundheads. As I write this, they are using helicopter
gunships to burn and blow up women and children in Fallujah.
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- I came across a fascinating passage in Richard Rhodes'
excellent history, The Making of the Atomic Bomb:
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- "One of Roosevelt's first acts was to appeal to
the belligerents to refrain from bombing civilian populations. Revulsion
against the bombing of cities had grown in the United States since at least
the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1937. When Spanish Fascists bombed
Barcelona in March, 1938, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had condemned
the atrocity publiclyAs war approached, revulsion began to give way to
impulses of revenge"
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- America, as we know, went, in a short time, from revulsion
at someone else's bombing to fire-bombing a number of cities and atomic-bombing
two others. Before the ashes had cooled on a million or so innocent victims
of air raids, that nest of vipers, the Communists, was released on the
world. A long series of bloody, largely pointless, conflicts culminated
in the holocaust-bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia. Hell, what's a few million
peasants when they might be demon minions of the Evil One?
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