One Nation, Under God? One World, Under Construction. . .

(Cross-posted from My Left Wing)

Mission Accomplished?

"Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." - James T. Kirk

Now there's a mission statement we could live with.

One Nation, Under God? One World, Under Construction. . .

liberalamerican's recent post Is Our Middle East Policy a Religious Crusade?, inspired me to put together a few thoughts on religion, politics, and the future. It's pretty clear that George W, Bush is not just the most powerful man in the world, he's the most dangerous one. Not since Dr. Strangelove have we seen paranoia wield such influence in the halls of power. It's also obvious from his recent performances at press conferences and photo-ops that he's still the arrogant little pissant he always was. The danger is not that our Middle East policy is a religious crusade, but rather that everyone else's is! The Middle East is the perfect storm of religion and politics mixing like water and (what was that other substance? oh yeah. . .) oil. Whether it's Israel's need to ensure and protect an adequate water supply or the Arab states' near monopoly on oil that leads them to bully, blackmail, and buy the rest of the world's favors, the end result is that each Government's interest is wrapped in nationalism, religion, jingoism, and ethno-centrism to masquerade as the people's self interest. The various "democracies," monarchies, oligarchies, and (in the case of Iraq) anarchies compete for survival at the expense of their own constituents. When the petty tyrants get into the act, the warlords, gang leaders, and crime bosses assume the guise of freedom-fighters, terrorists, islamo-fascists or saviors, depending on your perspective. Just as tyranny by majority rule based on common ethnicity or religious belief has proven to be an unworkable political methodology (see e.g., Northern Ireland, Uganda, Darfur, and South Africa or look up the definition of "balkanization" and "ethnic cleansing"), so has the nation-state itself become an anachronism. Can we point to any government on earth and proclaim that it is the best we could come up with? We desperately need a new vision for the future of the species.

If we do not learn from the pictures painted by our popular futurists, are we not destined to repeat our prospective mistakes, for the first time, again. Have we not learned anything from the post-apocalyptic visions of 1984, Brave New World, Mad Max, Blade Runner, Terminator, Sleeper, Tank Girl, or Max Headroom? Aren't we living with elements of all of those sci-fi prophesies now? Whether Big Brother assumes the form of a government, a corporation, or a dictator, are we, the people, not all left to serve a false idol of one sort or another? If we don't realize that we the people of earth are hurtling through space alone together on a big blue starship pretty soon, I fear that we will all succumb to W's 20:400 foresight and end up living in a desolate, oil and water deprived, android-populated, corporatocracy with nothing but a nose running our lives like a soiled tissue. Such is the danger of a Bush legacy - he may not want to bring on the Apocalypse in a religious sense, but he sure as Hell thinks he knows what's best for all of us and he'll do anything within his power to force it down our throats.

Whither religion in this administration's future? Or is that wither? Perhaps the GOP's culture of scandal and corruption will finally lead some of our good-hearted, middle America dwelling, flag waving, chest beating patriotic red staters to question whether God really speaks to W or the Republican National Cadre. Is W the Devil, instead of our savior? Maybe even Jack Van Impe will put the rapture on hold while we sort this out. With Hugo Chavez's diabolical diatribe fading out of our collective short-term memories, let's examine the iniquitous hyperbole.

Is W the Devil? Of course not. Satan, by all accounts, is much smarter than that. "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist." - Keyser Soze (or was it?)

Bush and his minions, however, just SCREAM the Seven Deadly Sins. First: Greed, that one's pretty obvious - selling influence, votes, government contracts, and the rest of us down the river is standard operating procedure. Next: Pride, or Arrogance, virtually defines the great "uniter not a divider," a man who so desperately wants a flattering, Reagan-esque sobriquet that he invents them himself. The dean of the Frank Sinatra School of Diplomacy and the architect of the least productive and most destructive Administration in American history hasn't even been able to wrest a cutesy nickname out of the Fox network. Third, if you're still counting: Wrath, the aimless man's raison detre, the unspoken motive for the invasion of Iraq, and the knee-jerk reaction to every criticism ever leveled against the Administration that failed to respond to Katrina or to rebuild New Orleans (Heckuva job, there, Bush-league!). And why? Number four would be Sloth, the prime motivating force among Bushie's Junior Under-Achievers. And what about the rest of the Seven Deadlies? Well, um, you know, Greed, Pride, Wrath, Sloth, and, uh . . . Grumpy? . . . Sleepy? . . . Dopey? Is he the Devil? I don't think so; he lacks the style, the panache, the efficiency. Satan's tool? You decide.

If not one devil, maybe another?

Everything about the Republicans' culture of corruption reeks of that ol' debbil, spin. The foibles of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Minions are routinely shrugged off (not nearly as effectively as The Teflon One, however). Each criticism is met by a not-so-equal and opposite smear campaign and fingerpointing ("banana-fana-fo-fana"). The Bush Litany (Bush-Lit) of blaming Bill Clinton, "the liberal main stream media," the "cut and run" Democrats, the "tax and spend" liberals, and maybe your grandmother is starting to ring hollow even among the GOP's core supporters. This sure as hell ain't yore granddaddy's Republican Party!

After six years of unbridled Greed, Arrogance, Fear and Hate, finally, moral outrage over the amoral modus operandi of far too many republicans may pull back the curtain to reveal that there's no Wiz in the Wizard of Aw-shucks. Just follow the yellow brick road - there's no place like the place where the pigeons come to roost.

Remember those Founding Fathers the neo-cons are so fond of summoning up for endorsements of everything from corporate welfare to undeclared war? Those guys were not exactly conservative in their time (why do you think we called it a Revolutionary War?). If they had modeled our government based on what the best thinkers of 250 years prior had done, we'd be living in a 1526 era feudal system where moneyed oligarchs treat indentured servants as property - a two class system where rich landowners control everything and working people tithe their hard-earned income to the overlords. Oh, wait a minute, have we come full-circle already?

We need to rein in W's ambitious agenda for world domination while we develop a strategic plan for the fate of humanity some 20, or 50, or 100 years from now.