The nature of the beast
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_826.shtml
By Sheila Samples
Online Journal Contributing Writer
May 23, 2006
"The demonic appears most
terrible when it assumes dominance in some one person. They are not
always the most admirable persons, either in mind or in gifts. But a
tremendous force goes out from them, and they exercise an unbelievable
power over all creatures. It is in vain that the brighter part of
mankind tries to throw suspicion on them as betrayers or betrayed; the
masses are attracted by them."
--Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
America has lost its way. We are a confused nation,
beset on all sides by fear and paranoia. After the orchestrated 9-11
attack on New York City and Washington, D.C., and its follow-up anthrax
attack on Democratic legislators, Americans of all stripes rushed en masse
to George Bush's Fools' Gate to trade their morality and compassion for
empty promises of security. The consequences of that Faustian trade are
unbelievable. In order to be safe we signed a pact with Decider Bush to
condone any atrocity he could dream up so long as it happened in other lands
to other men, other women, other children. He agreed, and further decided
that no law conjured up by mere man applied to him, especially the U.S.
Constitution, and demanded we sacrifice our freedoms as collateral for this
evil pact.
How easily we were fooled! Fat, indolent, and full of self-righteous
pus, we were ripe for harvest. We are at the mercy of The Decider, who is
manipulated from behind the scenes by unelected neo-Straussian thugs lusting
for the matrix of a One World Order. They are joined by Christo-fascists
soiling themselves at the thought of gaining dominion over the government
apparatus and realizing their dream of stoning gays and liberals to death,
and by rapacious corporations intent on ransacking the universe until it is
stripped of all treasure and resources. Although their agenda differ, this
greedy axis shares a single goal -- that of complete power and control -- an
area where morality dies aborning. They also share one other critical
attribute -- they are aggressively anti-American -- traitors contemptuous of
representative democracy who will not rest until every last vestige of it is
wiped from the face of the earth.
The war they are
waging is on us.
We have lost much over the past five years, but
nothing as profound as our spirituality.
The religious among us are little more than blind sheep milling around,
stumbling in single file in the direction of the loudest voice blaring from
Tower of Babel churches and media ministries. They are unable to discern
good from evil and incapable of recognizing the filthy hypocrisy of the
religious right's fundamentalist theocracy. And there are more of them every
day -- God's warriors eagerly following the divinely inspired Bush into a
dark world of assassination, torture, murder and madness. Bush is "born
again." He said so himself. God talks to him. Would he do anything that was
not God's will?
I wonder if there is just one true Christian who can look at what Bush has
done in the last five years, and what he is threatening to do in the next
three and say that Bush is "born again?" Do Christians not
know their own God? Did not God warn us to be vigilant against the
"Deceiver" masquerading as a messenger of light lest we fall prey to, and
become a part of, the evil swirling around us? Are we not responsible for
discerning the nature of the beast -- the false prophets sent out into the
world?
I do not recognize this devilishly destructive, violent god of the
evangelical religious right who has sent Bush on his genocidal mission. The
God I am familiar with is the One to whom my mother knelt in tearful prayer
each night and raised her sweet, wonderful voice in praise each day. He is
the One to whom David sang in Psalm 5:4 --"For thou are not a God who
delights in wickedness; evil may not sojourn with thee. The boastful may not
stand before thy eyes; thou hatest all evildoers. Thou destroyest those who
speak lies; the Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men."
Do not be deceived. Emerson says that virtue or vice emit a breath every
moment, and each breath Bush, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the
hypocritical Republican Christo-fascist machine emit are putrid blasts of
evil lies. As Carolyn Baker
writes
so succinctly . . ." The religious right of twenty-first century
America is anti-American, inherently violent, and a cruel, tyrannical,
punitive, force of death and destruction. "
Baker says the "unredeemed, the unbelievers, the poor, the
feminists, the gay and lesbian, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally
ill, the addicted, and those who are conscientiously following divergent
spiritual paths of their choice, are suffering in the wake of Christian
fundamentalism’s devastation of the economy, the earth, and the human race."
She says adult human lives do not matter to these people and, unless
we follow their tenets, we deserve to "burn in hell for all of
eternity. Hence, we are expendable, inconsequential, and a force to be
conquered, broken, imprisoned, or killed."
How easily these creatures who have never served their country in
uniform send others to be maimed, broken and killed in an endless
"war on terror," which is
nothing but an abstraction whose reality lies in the mind of the beholder.
[See, "Perception is Reality" - CR]
Day after weary day, the bodies
pile up at the feet of the stubborn, mean-spirited Bush and the beast he has
unleashed upon the world whose thirst for blood cannot be quenched. There
have been
2,471 Americans slaughtered because of the shameful lies told by Bush,
Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and others -- and especially
by the dishonorable Colin Powell who carried the beast's water all the way
to the United Nations. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan
men, women and children have perished on the alter of Bush's god, who is
even now panting to bury his fangs in the throat of Iran.
The present-day "religion" has little to do with Christianity.
It is all bloody politics.
The Republican Party is little more than a
fascist religious cult whose goal is to take over this republic and rule it
by the cold compassion of the Old Testament God. For those who doubt that
consolidating power and controlling politics is far more important to the
religious right than saving souls, Katherine Yurica reports in her
The New Messiahs excerpts that Pat Robertson announced publicly on his
700 Club, at a time when the religious right was gaining dominance,
“We have enough votes to run the country -- and when the people say,
‘we’ve had enough,’ we’re going to take over the country.”
Yurica said there was never any doubt of the ultimate goal of not
only Robertson, but Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and many others. "What
is dominion?" Pat Robertson asked his television audience,
“Well," he said, "dominion is lordship, to reign and rule."
And kill. The scent of innocent blood sends these guys into nearly
as wild a frenzy as it does Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Falwell recently
announced in trembling excitement, “You’ve got to kill the terrorists
before the killing stops. And I’m for the president to chase them all over
the world. If it takes 10 years, blow
them all away in the name of the Lord.”
Robertson has called on his followers
to pray for the deaths of Supreme Court justices. He has called for the
assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez no less than three times. Both
Falwell and Robertson openly blamed the attacks of 9-11 on gays, lesbians
and pagan liberals. If Robertson weren't so dangerous, the blasphemous
"chats" he claims to have, wherein he trivializes, demeans and ridicules the
Creator of the entire Universe, would be hilarious. Just last week Robertson
babbled that God gave him a heavenly weather report. "If I
heard the Lord
right," he said, "storms and possibly a tsunami would hit US coasts this
year."
[Note: He probably fell asleep watching the
Weather Channel . - CR]
And, in April, God helped him cure a woman
of her asthma. Robertson said fortunately he had his wife with him --
"this haunting woman . . . very attractive -- striking brunette, 45 years
old, you know thin, 5'8" kinda thing..." Robertson said he prayed,
"Lord, what's wrong with her?" And God said, "Ask
her about her sex life." Robertson and God argued for a bit before
Robertson asked her about her marriage, which she said was
"wonderful." He turned back to God, reminding us again that he had
his wife with him, and asked, "Lord, what's the matter?" God
insisted, "Ask her about her sex life." So, as soon as ol' Pat
asked her about her sex life and she said she didn't have any, God cured her
of her asthma.
The beasts who would destroy us -- will destroy us, if we are not
vigilant -- walk among us not as the hideous demons they are, but hide
their true nature behind the masks of their
twisted ethos, disguised as bumbling, arrogant fools.
Thanks to them, America is no longer a Beacon of Freedom to the rest of the
world, but a flickering ray of shame and derision.
Thanks to them, God has become a symbol of hate and terror. Because of
their lust, the American flag is now America's funeral shroud.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army
Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of
Internet sites. Contact her at:
rsamples@sirinet.net.
~~~~~~~~~
“Religion is indeed a principal thing, but too much is worse than
none at all.
The world abounds with knaves and villains, but of all knaves,
the religious knave is the worst; and villainies
acted under the cloak of religion
are the most despicable."
-- Benjamin Franklin