this shit is so scary....
from the article Welcome to Doomsday where Bill Moyers examines the fundamentalist right's effect on politics and environmentalism...
"How many true believers are there? It's impossible to pin down. But there is a constituency for the End Times. A Newsweek poll found that 36 percent of respondents held the Book of Revelation to be "true prophecy." (A Time/ CNN poll reported that one quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.) Drive across the country with your radio tuned to some of the 1,600 Christian radio stations or turn to some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear the Gospel of the Apocalypse in sermon and song. Or go, as The Toronto Star's Tom Harpur did, to the Florida Panhandle where he came across an all-day conference "at one of the largest Protestant churches I have ever been in," the Village Baptist Church in Destin. The theme of the day was "Left Behind: A Conference on Biblical Prophecy about End Times" and among the speakers were none other than Tim LaHaye and two other leading voices in the religious right today, Gary Frazier and Ed Hindson. Here is what Harpur wrote for his newspaper:
I have never heard so much venom and dangerous ignorance spouted before an utterly unquestioning, otherwise normal-looking crowd in my life.... There were stunning statements about humans having been only 6,000 years on Earth and other denials of contemporary geology and biology. And we learned that the Rapture, which could happen any second now, but certainly within the next 40 years, will instantly sweep all the "saved" Americans (perhaps one-half the population) to heaven....
But these fantasies were harmless compared with the hatred against Islam that followed. Here are some direct quotes: "Islam is an intolerant religionand it's clear whose side we should be on in the Middle East." Applause greeted these words: "Allah and Jehovah are not the same God.... Islam is a Satanic religion.... They're going to attack Israel for certain...." Gary Frazier shouted at the top of his lungs: "Wake Up! Wake Up!" And roughly eight hundred heads (at $25.00 per) nodded approval as he added that the left-wing, anti-Israel media"for example, CNN"will never tell the world the truth about Islam. According to these three, and the millions of Americans they lead, Muslims intend ultimately "to impose their religion on us all." It was clear, Harpur wrote: "A terrible, final war in the region is inevitable."
as well as
You can understand why people in the grip of such fantasies cannot be expected to worry about the environment. As Glenn Scherer writes in his report for the on-line environmental magazine Grist, 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? Why bother to convert to alternative sources of energy and reduce dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East? Anyway, until Christ does return, the Lord will provide.
and
Scherer came upon a high school history book, America's Providential History, which is used in fundamentalist circles. Students are told that "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a piethat needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." The Christian, however, "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."
et
I read that the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration:
* that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the national Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources;
* that wants to relax pollution limits for ozone, eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for cars, sport utility vehicles, and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment;
* that wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public;
* that wants to drop all its New-Source Review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies;
* that wants to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America;
* that is radically changing the management of our national forests to eliminate critical environmental reviews, open them to new roads, and give the timber companies a green light to slash and cut as they please.
I read the news and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency plotted to spend $9 million$2 million of it from the President's friends at the American Chemistry Councilto pay poor families to continue the use of pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry concocted a scheme to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.
ag
read the whole article...i hate this shit. i'm not a very "green" person, but i can't help but understand that resources are limited and the environment is declining and that at some point the declination will curve downward at a very swift rate. i'm also sure that when humanity kills itself off to a large degree - be it by nuclear war, forced attrition or other toxic elements, the earth will very slowly rebuild and become habitable for the next generation of sentient life. but thats very far away, and right now i get to live in the declination and have my life towed about by some deluded religious right - the same "scholars" that have the audacity to tear up the DaVinci code as dangerous fantasies while they tote around a copy of the bible - seriously,,. crazed fundamentalists that bitch about islam trying to impose itself on everyone else as they shove the bible into my bag, my car, my television, my computer and down my throat. we're under the hoof of legitimately crazy people, men and women who have actually lost touch with reality are controlling our world. that fucking scares the hell out of me... and then i think, well, reality can be pretty subjective, so who says i'm right...but then my objective-self kicks my kant-ian self in the gut and says "no, you rotten pig-fucker, reality is not subjective, not so far as you're concerned" and i tremble in fear.
oh yeah, and the senate voted to open up ANWR (the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge) to oil drilling... my early money is on the idea that the movie Escape from New York was a true-to-life documentary sent to us from the future and no piece of hollywood fiction
from the article Welcome to Doomsday where Bill Moyers examines the fundamentalist right's effect on politics and environmentalism...
"How many true believers are there? It's impossible to pin down. But there is a constituency for the End Times. A Newsweek poll found that 36 percent of respondents held the Book of Revelation to be "true prophecy." (A Time/ CNN poll reported that one quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.) Drive across the country with your radio tuned to some of the 1,600 Christian radio stations or turn to some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear the Gospel of the Apocalypse in sermon and song. Or go, as The Toronto Star's Tom Harpur did, to the Florida Panhandle where he came across an all-day conference "at one of the largest Protestant churches I have ever been in," the Village Baptist Church in Destin. The theme of the day was "Left Behind: A Conference on Biblical Prophecy about End Times" and among the speakers were none other than Tim LaHaye and two other leading voices in the religious right today, Gary Frazier and Ed Hindson. Here is what Harpur wrote for his newspaper:
I have never heard so much venom and dangerous ignorance spouted before an utterly unquestioning, otherwise normal-looking crowd in my life.... There were stunning statements about humans having been only 6,000 years on Earth and other denials of contemporary geology and biology. And we learned that the Rapture, which could happen any second now, but certainly within the next 40 years, will instantly sweep all the "saved" Americans (perhaps one-half the population) to heaven....
But these fantasies were harmless compared with the hatred against Islam that followed. Here are some direct quotes: "Islam is an intolerant religionand it's clear whose side we should be on in the Middle East." Applause greeted these words: "Allah and Jehovah are not the same God.... Islam is a Satanic religion.... They're going to attack Israel for certain...." Gary Frazier shouted at the top of his lungs: "Wake Up! Wake Up!" And roughly eight hundred heads (at $25.00 per) nodded approval as he added that the left-wing, anti-Israel media"for example, CNN"will never tell the world the truth about Islam. According to these three, and the millions of Americans they lead, Muslims intend ultimately "to impose their religion on us all." It was clear, Harpur wrote: "A terrible, final war in the region is inevitable."
as well as
You can understand why people in the grip of such fantasies cannot be expected to worry about the environment. As Glenn Scherer writes in his report for the on-line environmental magazine Grist, 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? Why bother to convert to alternative sources of energy and reduce dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East? Anyway, until Christ does return, the Lord will provide.
and
Scherer came upon a high school history book, America's Providential History, which is used in fundamentalist circles. Students are told that "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a piethat needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." The Christian, however, "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."
et
I read that the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration:
* that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the national Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources;
* that wants to relax pollution limits for ozone, eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for cars, sport utility vehicles, and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment;
* that wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public;
* that wants to drop all its New-Source Review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies;
* that wants to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America;
* that is radically changing the management of our national forests to eliminate critical environmental reviews, open them to new roads, and give the timber companies a green light to slash and cut as they please.
I read the news and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency plotted to spend $9 million$2 million of it from the President's friends at the American Chemistry Councilto pay poor families to continue the use of pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry concocted a scheme to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.
ag
read the whole article...i hate this shit. i'm not a very "green" person, but i can't help but understand that resources are limited and the environment is declining and that at some point the declination will curve downward at a very swift rate. i'm also sure that when humanity kills itself off to a large degree - be it by nuclear war, forced attrition or other toxic elements, the earth will very slowly rebuild and become habitable for the next generation of sentient life. but thats very far away, and right now i get to live in the declination and have my life towed about by some deluded religious right - the same "scholars" that have the audacity to tear up the DaVinci code as dangerous fantasies while they tote around a copy of the bible - seriously,,. crazed fundamentalists that bitch about islam trying to impose itself on everyone else as they shove the bible into my bag, my car, my television, my computer and down my throat. we're under the hoof of legitimately crazy people, men and women who have actually lost touch with reality are controlling our world. that fucking scares the hell out of me... and then i think, well, reality can be pretty subjective, so who says i'm right...but then my objective-self kicks my kant-ian self in the gut and says "no, you rotten pig-fucker, reality is not subjective, not so far as you're concerned" and i tremble in fear.
oh yeah, and the senate voted to open up ANWR (the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge) to oil drilling... my early money is on the idea that the movie Escape from New York was a true-to-life documentary sent to us from the future and no piece of hollywood fiction
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
dollfacepunk:
forearm...and i don't know what i'm up to...give me a call at work or something sometime...you can look up the digits in the phonebook or something...
il_brutto:
Thanks for listening.