Glenn Beck informed America yesterday that we have been wandering in darkness.
My recollection of the verses off which he is riffing (Isaiah 9:2, Matthew 4:16) is that they follow the walking in darkness with someone bringing a great light.
Who does Mr. Beck imagine is the great light-bearer for our nation now, I wonder?
Can a Messiah who is bought lock, stock, and barrel, and whose message is precisely antithetical to that of the Messiah whom Christians believe and Jews await ("insofar as you did this to the least of these, you did it to me"; "go, sell what you have, give it to the poor, and follow me") really be the new Messiah?
Does a credible call for a new religious awakening of a nation come from the likes of Mr. Murdoch and Messrs Koch? Or would any nation that welcomes the call to spiritual revival at the hands of Rupert Murdoch and Charles and David Koch be a nation of fools intent on self-destruction?
What happens in the fall elections will reveal the answer to that question, I think. And if I were a betting man encouraging others to bet, I wouldn't urge you to place your money on conscience, enlightenment, authentic spirituality, or fidelity to the core values of the world's religious traditions.
Better to go with the self-duped fools, if you want to win your bet.
P.S. For all those who have been prattling on about the tea partiers' transcendence of the old culture-war battles about religion and sexual orientation, yesterday's national revival meeting ought to lay matters to rest. The intent of the cynical, filthy rich men funding the tea party is to use religious "values" about which they don't give a hoot to divide and deceive us while they rob us, and to set us against each other re: culture war issues like gay marriage. That intent remains constant despite the dishonest pretense that the tea party movement has transcended religious and culture-war divisions.
And if we swallow the rhetoric of religious revival coming from the lips of men like this and of their bought and paid-for epigones, then perhaps we deserve the real darkness that will soon be coming our way. When they run the nation even more directly than they already do now . . . .
And if we swallow the rhetoric of religious revival coming from the lips of men like this and of their bought and paid-for epigones, then perhaps we deserve the real darkness that will soon be coming our way. When they run the nation even more directly than they already do now . . . .