"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. 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."

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.

© 2006 Sheila Samples