I’ve been trying to be optimistic about the continuing debacle (at least from a progressive point of view) that is the Bush presidency. It’s been alternately easy and difficult.

Easy because I’ve been so busy, I can sort of forget about. Also, like many things, these things go in cycles and eventually (I hope) the country will swing back around. Additionally, he’s out after this term, and hopefully he’s done enough damage that enough people will vote for some other party that we can at least get a moderate Democrat as president. (I’ve no illusions about actually getting someone progressive in; I’m optimistic, not delusional.)

Hard because everytime I turn around it seems like I’m hearing about thinly veiled religious groups trying to introduce junk-science into our science class rooms, our president claiming his God is on our side (as if God takes sides, I would assume you choose to be on his side, or not), his administration is commiting another foreign policy debacle or assault on the environment; a book is being banned from some school because it ‘promotes’ paganism/occultism/homosexuality/swearing (usually means mention, and typically in the context of how deal it). As an aside, if someone is worried about books promoting sweating in high school. they are seriously barking up the wrong tree. The swearing is there already, quite a bit of it in fact.

Anyhow, you get the idea.

Then I read this article, Welcome to Doomsday, by Bill Moyers. (Go read it, this post will still be here when you’re done.) If you didn’t google for the “Rapture Index” here’s the page to which he’s referring.

Now, granted Moyers gives us a few slivers of hope, but all-in-all that’s a pretty depressing and scary summation of the state of things in this country. Also, I’ll certainly grant that Moyers is liberal, but I think he tends to be an honest journalist. (Unlike, say Michael Moore, who, despite so much verifiably true material on the subjects of his documentaries still can’t resist overstating and misrepresenting.)

While personally I think this Rapture business is a bunch of fucking bullshit and any god that would inflict this on a world is a sadistic asshole, I will allow for possibility, however slim that the Rapture is just around the corner and what we do as far as the environment doesn’t matter for beans. But guess what? Maybe we shouldn’t bet the farm on this. ‘Cause, you know what, if you’re wrong and we have to clean this mess up, the price tag is only going up. Not to mention that in the meanwhile, we have to deal with and suffer through all the pollution driven problems that already exist.

How did we come to this delusional justification of our irresponsibility? I mean, really. 33% of the world is Christian and only a fraction of them buy into this – and really this seems to be a very tiny fraction outside of the US. It’s a very dangerous state of affairs. Because the US, which is still the most influential and polluting country in the world and because, given the currently political landscape here clearly are able influence things a great deal, here we are. The country most able to do harm or help is tipped to the side of “screw it, it won’t matter anyhow”. How depressing.

Doomsday indeed.