Assessing Damage from a Religious Fundamentalist Ideological Insurgency in a Time of Severe National Crisis
This Topic is not Dead
While not willing to actually label Obama the Antichrist, Timothy LaHaye is quoted as stating: "I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the antichrist..." Clever understatement on LaHaye's part.
The LaHayes: Delusional Absolutists—Our Way or No way
Much more content and Background on LaHaye Versus Obama and the Antichrist below the fold:
The Holy Crusader Couple
"Yes, religion and politics do mix. America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office."
-- Quote by Beverly LaHaye, Concerned Women For America, In a Ms. Magazine interview, 2/87
Timothy and Beverly LaHaye, self-appointed guardians of the Fundamentalist faith, have been in the battle for the soul of America for a long, long time. LaHaye, once the editor of the now defunct The Fundamentalist publication, proclaimed early on that the only person qualified to be elected president in America, (in LaHaye’s vision the United States being a "Christian Country") would be only a person said to be "born again."
No Humanist is Fit to Hold Office
The Reverend Tim LaHaye co-authored Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium, published in 2000. The best-selling book issues a call to arms for evangelical Christians to battle against secular humanism. Mind Siege declares that secular humanism is a "religion," and issues marching orders to evangelical Christians to gear up for an all-out battle to root secular humanists out of public life; their bottom line is that "No humanist is fit to hold office." -- Reports TheocracyWatch
LaHaye’s work as a religious prophetic voice and moral scold goes back for decades.
LaHaye was instrumental in the assemblage of and the on-going mission of a secretive right wing power cabal, The Council for National Policy, CNP, which meets secretly from time to time and has been in the business of vetting their own choices for presidential candidates. In 2000 with the help of Michael Gerson, Doug Wead, and others Gov. George W. Bush received the approving nod from LaHaye and the CNP.
LaHaye's Direct Role in the Rise of George W. Bush
Of course, there have always been preachers on the margins of the religious right thundering on about the end of the world. But it's doubtful that such a fanatic believer has ever had such a direct pipeline to the White House. Five years ago, as Bush was gearing up his presidential campaign, he made a little-noticed pilgrimage to a gathering of right-wing Christian activists, under the auspices of a group called the Committee to Restore American Values. The committee, which assembled about two dozen of the nation's leading fundamentalist firebrands, was chaired by LaHaye. At the time, many evangelicals viewed Bush skeptically: Despite his born-again views, when he was governor of Texas, Bush had alienated many of the state's Christian-right activists for failing to pursue a sufficiently evangelical agenda. On the national level, he was an unknown quantity.
That day, behind closed doors, LaHaye grilled the candidate. He presented Bush with a lengthy questionnaire on issues such as abortion, judicial appointments, education, religious freedom, gun control and the Middle East. What the preacher thought of Bush's answers would largely determine whether the Christian right would throw its muscle behind the Texas governor. --Richard Dreyfus, Rolling Stone, Reverend Doomsday@ @ http://www.rollingstone.com/...
George W. Bush got the nod from LaHaye conservatives and the Council for National Policy, the rest is history.
LaHaye Remains Active Behind the Scenes in National Politics
LaHaye’s CNP is said to have influenced the choice of Sarah Palin to sweeten the far rights’ serious "turn-off" toward John McCain and attempt a last minute rescue of McCain’s failing campaign to save their agenda.
LaHaye’s Right Wing Fanaticism and Activism is Distributed Throughout Several Hard Right Organizations
Prior to the stunning success of the novels, LaHaye was better known as one of the most prominent religious-right activists. He was one of the founders, with Jerry Falwell, of the Moral Majority, and he spoke at the 1980 National Affairs Briefing in Dallas, a crucial event in forming the alliance between the new Religious Right and Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan.
As head of Family America, and later the American Coalition for Traditional Values, he described himself as "the Christian Ambassador to Washington, D.C.," and he was among the vanguard of those pushing the Republican Party farther to the right.
Rolling Stone's Dreyfus reports:
Mostly preferring to stay out of the limelight, LaHaye has been the moving force behind several key organizations on the Christian right that have redrawn the boundaries of American politics. In 1979, at a time when ministers confined themselves to their churches, he prodded the Rev. Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority, a group that launched today's cultural wars against feminism, homosexuality, abortion, drugs and pornography. In 1981, he helped found the little-known but vastly powerful Council for National Policy, a secretive group of wealthy donors that has funneled billions of dollars to right-wing Christian activists. "No one individual has played a more central organizing role in the religious right than Tim LaHaye," says Larry Eskridge of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, calling him "the most influential American evangelical of the last twenty-five years."
In 1984, former Republican Rep. John Buchanan (then chairman of People For the American Way) warned,"If we don't speak up now, the party of Abraham Lincoln may be hijacked by Tim LaHaye and [CPAC head] Terry Dolan."
LaHaye’s battles against what he called "secular humanism" led him to interrogate the "religious persuasion" of Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O’Connor, to revive the ancient theory of the Four Humors , and to lead his followers to political activism. "Next to your salvation the most important day of your life will be election day 1984," read one ACTV mailing.
LaHaye resigned as co-chairman of Jack Kemp’s 1988 presidential bid after past statements were made public in which he declared Catholicism a "false religion" and noted "Brilliant Jewish minds have all too frequently been devoted to philosophies that have proved harmful to mankind."
One of LaHaye’s main campaigns was, as he titled one of his books – in particular "the battle for children’s minds." "A child’s natural IQ, skills, and potential will be seriously limited if he is not indoctrinated with the time honored moral values of integrity, virtue, honesty, industry, and self-discipline," he wrote, while complaining that violent crime was caused by "the amoral humanists [who] control the networks, the leading TV shows, writers, producers, and many actors.
LaHaye’s best know recent work are his novels, a series he co-authored of fictional religious fantasies entitled "Left Behind." His books became crossover best sellers and were made into a commercial movie shown in theaters across the world.
LaHaye’s "Deadly Moral Cleansing" Model: A Commercial and Violent "Christian" Video Game for Children
Moving on to capitalize on the success and millions in revenue he had generated, LaHaye and collaborators decided to produce a very violent video game for children, Left Behind: Eternal Forces wherein players, who are ascribed a place in the army of the righteous--are enticed to set out to wipe out the hoards of evil in the name of God. These enemy throngs include unrepentant/lapsed Christians whose beliefs are less spiritual than that of LaHayes’ Fundamentalist Born Againers, and all others,be they Pagans, Jews, other religionists, anyone not a "pure" follower of Christ--defined and certified by LaHaye’s vision of the plan of God for LaHaye’s fanciful and frightening Apocalyptic End Times
Rightwing Watch:
Tim LaHaye’s first foray into the video game market, a growing medium for children and teenagers: "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," designed to "appeal to mainstream gamers and perpetuate Christian values" by simulating the mass-killing of non-Christians.
Source @ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/...
LaHaye Has Inspired Other Radical Tomes and Outcomes
LaHaye has helped to spawn other works by far right religionists, e.g. "John Hagee's 2001 55-minute film "Vanished" followed the prophetic, pre-millennial plot line of Tim LaHaye's and Jerry Jenkin's, according to bloggers responding to Joan Bokaers, The Fight for The Soul of The GOP Is On!, 12.2.08
Hagee’s heavy handed and well-funded push for Christian Zionism and unconditional support for Israel (in all of its military operations and nuclear abilities) has had a real and strategic impact on the Middle East diplomacy and by that upon the attitudes and angst of Arab and Islamic militants around the world.
LaHaye v. Obama: The Antichrist Accusation link with LaHaye, drawn from the McCain Campaign Ad August 2008.
The final moral conflict, as LaHaye depicts it, is with the Antichrist and his followers in the Holy Land. This future and coming conflict, in LaHaye and followers view, is immanent and real to them and forms the basis of many of their actions and crusades.
"The One": Provocative McCain Ad
CNN picked up on a McCain campaign video ad called "The One" which appeared to present Obama as the Antichrist.
CNN aired the August 2008 McCain campaign ad and held a discussion of its content, See Youtube clip @ http://www.youtube.com/...
In commentary David Edwards and Nick Juliano, Obama the ‘Antichrist?' CNN Actually Asks, wrote:
McCain's campaign of course insists that convincing Evangelicals that Obama was the Anti-Christ was never their intention. CNN notes that regardless of its intent, though, the ad seems to have spurred increased interest in the baseless speculation. At least one entire blog is devoted to the question and a Google search for "Obama Antichrist" returns nearly 1 million results.
The "Baseless Speculation" Spread Like Wildfire
What CNN reported about the ad gives a chilling insight as to how malleable the general public is to this archetypal use of a fictional religious conflict involving an Antichrist--which holds forth both a purity of warlike purpose and redemption for the remnant of the world’s population, held to be the members of the triumphant army of God. They are to win out over all others and the Antichrist--all condemned and doomed to eternal damnation.
This is a very dangerous and contiguous concept which arms the fanaticism of Fundamentalistic Christians who hold an Antichrist figure as literal truth, the Ultimate Enemy.
Time Magazine took up the ad controversy: An Antichrist Obama Ad, Amy Sullivan, Aug.08,2008:
The ad was the creation of Fred Davis, one of McCain's top media gurus as well as a close friend of former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and the nephew of conservative Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. It first caught the attention of Democrats familiar with the Left Behind series, a fictionalized account of the end-time that debuted in the 1990s and has sold nearly 70 million books worldwide. "The language in there is so similar to the language in the Left Behind books," says Tony Campolo, a leading progressive Evangelical speaker and author.
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According to Time’s Amy Sullivan LeHaye’s work inspired former associates, who produced and distributed Antichrist Obama, The One, a loaded McCain campaign ad (August 2008) in the same genre as the infamous "Willie Horton ad."
The McCain ad is described by Time as follows:
As the ad begins, the words "It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: "We Are God") and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we've been waiting for."
The visual images in the ad, which Davis says has been viewed even more than McCain's "Celeb" ad linking Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, also seem to evoke the cover art of several Left Behind books. But they're not the cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama that might be expected in an ad spoofing him as a messiah. Instead, the screen displays a sinister orange light surrounded by darkness and later the faint image of a staircase leading up to heaven.
The LaHaye imagery is cleverly designed for double meaning and devilish subterfuge:
The visual images in the ad, which Davis says has been viewed even more than McCain's "Celeb" ad, linking Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, also seems to evoke the cover art of several Left Behind books. But they're not the cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama that might be expected in an ad spoofing him as a messiah. Instead, the screen displays a sinister orange light surrounded by darkness and later the faint image of a staircase leading up to heaven.
Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign's red-white-and-blue "O" logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.
How Important Then Was the McCain Antichrist Political Ad? What effect can it have on an Obama Administration?
CNN reported that the Google hits on the topic reached 900 thousand hits, some sources report as many as a million hits total were recorded.
According to the CNN news desk approximately 73% of those viewing the subliminally charged ad believed Obama "is or may be the Antichrist."
That is a disturbing and troubling number. This incident illustrates the danger embedded in the use of this kind of unacceptable propaganda propagating fear mongering—boutique bigotry.
How clever, LaHaye’s point of view and the controversy it created (via the McCain Ad) had just the kind of national exposure LaHaye craves and for free! LaHaye was able to see his work telescoped across the nation and the world—amplified and puditized just at a time LaHaye hoped it would doom Obama’s campaign.
LaHaye adroitly disavowed any direct connection with the ad, but the ad’s effect was already burned on the national screen, the real damage was inflicted.
...(A)uthors of the Left Behind books, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, have felt compelled to weigh in, saying that they don’t think that Obama is the Antichrist ... even though they apparently think it is understandable why people might think that he is.
LaHaye and Jenkins take a literal interpretation of prophecies found in the Book of Revelation. They believe the Antichrist will surface on the world stage at some point, but neither see Obama in that role. "I've gotten a lot of questions the last few weeks asking if Obama is the antichrist," says novelist Jenkins. "I tell everyone that I don't think the antichrist will come out of politics, especially American politics."
"I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the antichrist," adds LaHaye, "but from my reading of scripture, he doesn't meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the antichrist will be an American."
LaHaye makes his own fictionalized version of the apocalypse readily available, useful in his own conviction and aims, a tool of redemption aimed toward those who may be convinced to accept his vision of a complete and utter doomsday event.
Albeit, talk of an Antichrist also raises a challenging red flag of provocation for those whose Islamic Funadamentalism is in opposition to such a Christian Fundamentalist final End Times scenario.
LaHaye's version can, and does, provoke a very severely heightened urgency on the part of radical Islamic Fundamentalists to terrorize and destroy the Christian culture such as LaHaye's archetype--a fictional account presents its future war with Islam. The present danger represented in two theaters of war (which involve primarily American troops, is heightened when LaHaye's works picture Christians construed as deadly enemies of Allah's followers) is ever present and may provoke more acts of terror on U.S. soil.
End Times and the U.S. Military
The incessant conservative religious pressure on military bases and at U.S. military academies to recruit and develop Fundamentalistic Protestant believers through proselytizing military men and women only adds to the highly inflammatory milieu throughout the Islamic world.
Certainly the former remarks of the Pentagon's General Boykin (in full uniform, speaking at various Evangelical churches) spoke of his opinion to actual combat and special forces operations as the work of "the true God" only sharpen this distinction and alert our enemies in places around the world with beliefs, ideologies, and religious hopes and fundamentalisms--far different from ours--to act while they have us over-extended in the field. Gen. Boykin’s remarks only further illustrate the degree to which radical thinking and ideology can invade the U.S. Military.
If we are to stem the tide of the religious fanaticism in the Taliban and other groups, we must first deal directly and surgically with fanatics within our own ranks, whose zealotry is danger in itself..
In point of fact, it’s interesting to note that at one stage the publishers of Left Behind: Eternal Force were prepared to send hundreds of copies of the video game to troops in the field for their use and enjoyment, but were turned back by U.S. Military command higher ups.
The Antichrist and End Times The Setting for LaHaye’s Left Behind: Eternal Forces--Christian video game
Fox News described LaHaye’s video game in the following manner:
This isn't your run-of-the-mill video game: "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" is based on the best-selling "Left Behind" book series about the apocalypse.
But it's the apocalypse without dismemberment or graphic bloodshed, though the game has an element of violence that some Christians argue is counter to teachings of the Bible.
The game's creators say they hope to wriggle into the multibillion-dollar mainstream video-game market by offering a real-time strategy option for serious gamers. Yet they believe the faith-based theme is important, too.
Source: Fox News, 'Left Behind'Books Spawn Violent Video Game, Sept. 15, 2006 @ http://www.foxnews.com/...
Weak and impressionable youthful minds, mavens and fans of the Eternal Force, Left Behind video game are physiologically involved in the emotion and the behavioral patterns the game engenders in their thinking and imaginations.
To say the interactive game is "only a game" (the killing is "sanitized and not bloody or gory") is to deny the power of the game itself. Eternal Forces actually "war games" and imprints the senses, the minds, the wills and attitudes of its participants with the patterns and rewards of killing for Jesus. Mass slaughter is endemic to and provocatively laid out in the enticement of the escalating levels of the game. And what does the game use a title for the evil forces, who are the enemy to be annihilated called? The Global Community Peacekeepers!
Youthful players of Eternal Forces are under the influence of a powerful propagandistic religionist, as the Anti-Defamation League points out:
"The game and the belief system behind it are dangerous, because they teach that Judaism and other non-Christian faiths are not valid," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "Jews, Muslims and other non-Christians are seen as incomplete unless they convert, a concept that is contrary to the American ideal of respect for all religions."
The "Eternal Forces" video game pits the "good guys," a Christian religious militia, against "bad guys" dubbed the Global Community Peacekeepers – a United Nations-like world army led by the anti-Christ, according to ADL. While the Left Behind books portray a world beset with violence, and the final installment of the series is full of gruesome scenes of destruction and the killing of Jews and others, the video game avoids such stark portrayals.
However, "the video game promotes the overall message of an exclusivist religious system that considers the proselytizing of Jews and others to be an imperative," said Mr.Foxman. "This theology portrays itself as the only path to salvation. And Jews, people of any other faith or those of no faith who do not convert before it's too late are destined to suffer horrible deaths."
Source: Left Behind Video Game Promotes Intolerance of Jews and Non-Christian Faiths
@ http://www.adl.org/...
The alarming thing about the gore-less slaughter depicted in LaHaye’s game is that such stylized depictions of carnage and mass murder (which do not include realism as to the actual acts and mutilation involved) have the effect of desensitizing the participants as to the nature of an actual encounter should it occur.
LaHaye’s video presents killing as an act akin to a fighter pilot picking off targets from far above—quite impersonal. The experience of a soldier in house to house urban warfare or on a close quarter battlefield is completely different and life-altering in its experiential proximity to combat death and its horrors.
Over and over in playing the Left Behind game, participants learn to execute the "kill impulse" for a religious cause, with the blessing of the holy archetype LaHaye has created. They participate (train) thinking and truly believing, in the unquestioning and devotional manner of the Fundamentalist tradition, that to kill for Jesus brings Heaven closer and the cleansing of the world of "sinners and Satan" is to usher in paradise, the fuller reality.
Grandparents are shocked to hear their grandchildren proclaim that they are more than ready to kill Muslims.
The intoxication of the pornography of killing for the thrill of it as entertainment, and for a higher order religious purpose, stated and tied to generous religious rewards, has historically accrued to the warrior (crusader). Such war fighters, in so doing, have been long been the bane of all humankind. To have such elements meet and combine in power and purpose in a right wing religious/political context such as LaHaye constructs in Left Behind: Eternal Force is an amoral abomination and represents real danger to us all.
How many "sleepers" are willing to take up weaponry and act out the themes concocted in their twisted indoctrinated minds based on the works of LaHaye?
The Christian Militia and other wildfire militias elements have existed for a long time. It was startling and revealing to hear the residents of Decker, Michigan defend (on Ted Koppel’s ABC Nightline) and mitigate the horror and evil of the Oklahoma City bombing in defense of those, who out of that rural conservative community (McViegh and Nickols), planned and carried out horrific atrocity.
One has to wonder how many Timothy McViegh’s are out there, convinced of the purity of a "God called mission" for their individual actions, perhaps, like McVeigh @ http://en.wikipedia.org/... -- having been given training in our military, suggestible to such fictions as the The Turner Diaries and/or the concepts in Left Behind who are willing to take up weaponry and act out the themes concocted in their twisted minds. Such terrible actions have great attraction, empirically proven by the purchase of over 70 million copies of the Left Behind hype, to have great attraction for so many. LaHaye’s contrived call to end times "direct action" provides for some, a Byzantine "hope" for personal redemption and heroic participation in the salvation of the faithful, especially to those who commit to believe the content which LaHaye has created--out of misguided literalism, dangerous ideology, and fictional whole cloth.
Fundamentalist Home Schooled Children Create a Unique Cohort in Any Study of the Effect of LaHaye's Violent Video Game
Thousands of children are being home schooled by parents holding firmly to the literalism that is part-and-parcel of the LaHaye vision of the End of the World. They live in a fearful state, afraid of modernity and diversity. These children have little or no involvement with the wider community and the cultural ideas of the world. This is can be a fertile breeding ground for fanaticism. Deviant impulse, if there, must be factored into any assessment of the danger such video game training and ideological doctrines and moral preparations can have on such children, isolated from open society. Couple that with LaHaye’s fear and dread worldview: What will be the decisions of these youths as they enter the adult world and the serve in the military?
New York Times Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof Laments Bigoted Attacks
Nicholas Kristof reported last September his findings in the New York Times:
In conservative Christian circles and on Christian radio stations, there are even widespread theories that Mr. Obama just may be the Antichrist. Seriously.
John Green, of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, says that about 10 percent of Americans believe we may be in the Book of Revelation’s "end times" and are on the lookout for the Antichrist. A constant barrage of e-mail and broadcasts suggest that Mr. Obama just may be it.
The online Red State Shop sells T-shirts, mugs and stickers exploiting the idea. Some shirts and stickers portray a large "O" with horns, above a caption: "The Anti-Christ."
To his credit, Mr. McCain himself has never raised doubts about Mr. Obama’s religion. But a McCain commercial last month mimicked the words and imagery of the best-selling Christian "Left Behind" book series in ways that would have set off alarm bells among evangelicals nervous about the Antichrist.
Mr.McCain himself is not popular with evangelicals. But they will vote for him if they think the other guy may be on Satan’s side.
In fact, of course, Mr. Obama took his oath on the Bible, not — as the rumors have it — on the Koran. He is far more active in church than John McCain is.
Kristof Came to a Stark Conclusion, Well Worth Revisiting
What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian.
The result is this campaign to "otherize" Mr. Obama. Nobody needs to point out that he is black, but there’s a persistent effort to exaggerate other differences, to de-Americanize him.
Source: The Push to Otherize Obama, NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF WebSource @ http://www.nytimes.com/...
Commingled with the Antichrist material being used by the far right is the antithesis, Obama may be the Messiah: Source: Carter, Obama, Messiah? @ http://uspoliticsandreligion.blogspo...
The alternating use of the title Messiah or Antichrist, in these contexts, is a pejorative, mocking, and sacrilegious tactic employed by radical talk radio personages, especially Micahel Savage,Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Their sarcastic and derogatory usage of these religiously weighted titles is meant to undercut Obama’s status as our elected president and diminish his effectiveness as our leader.
Apparently the labeling of Obama with Antichrist and/or Messiah moniker is an believed to be an effective provocateur’s tool used in stirring motivational angst and anger in the lunatic fringe known to listen to these irresponsible loud mouths.
None-the-less this kind of abrasive and divisive use of Biblical titles—One of Supreme Evil and the other of Supreme Good-- to obfusticate and diminish the respect due and needed Barack Obama as he attempts the rescue of our nation from the most formidable economic distress and burden of two failing wars is unacceptable and tragic.
Such rhetoric and muckraking is unacceptable--tragically out of step with the acute somberness and need for unity behind leadership in this time of ultimate crisis.
As we continue to learn how dire America's economic situation is and also that of economies around the world, it's imperative that we, as informed and dedicated citizens, reject the clamor and bitterness of the political opposition to programs and legislation that will be necessary to save the day.
As trillions of taxpayer dollars are bandied about, there are vociferous diatribes and accusatory proclamations which have ensues over the spending needed to pull our country back from the brink. In such times talk of the Antichrist or mocking sectarian reference to the Messiah designed to derail effective recovery by raising fear of government for ideological gain is beyond the limits of helpful discourse.
Just as Chip Saltsman, in his bid to become the National GOP Chairman, has been stalled in his efforts and chastised over his insensitive and provocative decision to distribute a purportedly "humorous" CD entitled "Barack, the Magical Negro," so too must hateful expressions such as Obama the Antichrist or Obama the Messiah (however snide or entertaining to the "fringe" they seem) be suppressed and removed from our national discourse and from the clamorous and divisive militant myth making. Associating those titles with Barack Obama is intended to exacerbate the distrust and resentment many Fundamentalists and hard rightists feel toward the federal government and its programs.
Such mockery is not civil, it isn’t Christ-like, and it certainly is not entertainment—some kind of bigoted buffoonery.
It’s dead wrong.
AFTERTHOUGHT
Mad rancor and divisiveness must be brought under control through public pressure and a civic sense of fairness.
If there is to be no Fairness Doctrine, why not enforce a voluntary Civil Broadcast Code of Ethics and Conduct?
One very effective way may be to carefully note who the local sponsors of radical radio are in your area and take action to let them know of your rejection of that sponsorship and their products and/or services.
Citizens must do their part by every individual means to calm the discussion and quell the rancor. The only way out of our present daunting crisis is through unity and the common bonds of trust and forbearance.
E Pluribus Unum