“...and not get sober until 2008.”  When Hillary and Barack take over and bring back sanity.  I fear, however, that it may already be too late.

I hear it was the evangelical christians, which makes a great deal of sense.  Because, when you think about it, the purpose of the evangelicals is to hasten Armaggedon, and W as an evangelical christian himself, well, he’s made a fine start, don’t you think? 

I’ve been to Armageddon (a/k/a Meggido) in Israel.  It’s a pile of dusty dirt that happens to intersect several ancient roads and was therefor a strategic spot of real estate to control by whatever side happened to claim it.  The first recorded battle in history happened on that spot.  Remind me to show you the rocks and pottery shards.

Anyway, so that’s what we’re supposed to be looking forward to, I guess.  Pack your bags.

“I am dressed all in black today, in mourning for my country.”

Me too!

I was up late the other night and watched a CNN special on evangelicals.  Reporter asked a Southern Baptist mother about her hopes for her children in the coming years, and she said, “I just hope that Jesus Christ returns soon and takes my babies to heaven.”

THIS is why Dubya is President.  The U.S. is on the fast track to becoming the Fundamentalist Christian Redneck version of Iran.

I hear New Zealand is nice and they don’t really have anything the U.S. wants so it isn’t likely that America will invade them….

One word: Mexico.

I’m 15 minutes from the Mexican border…anyone that cares to go there is welcome to meet up here first.

I’ll be wearing black too…I’d join you in that drinking binge, I’ll just be your bartender instead….although, I’m wondering, just what harm would it really do, everything is gonna go to shit anyway. (oh, oops, that’s my alcoholism talkin’...I.must.ignore.)

This came to me privately, from a reader in New Zealand, who wished to be anonymous, but who gave me permission to post it….

Nobody predicted this outcome. Nobody at all.  Anyone who says they got it right is kidding themselves.

I saw a lot of vote-changing behaviour talked about – but that didn’t get taken into the ballot boxes.  All bravado and swagger? All the newspaper endorsements that were changed? Even Sullivan?  How do you explain the lines for early voting on display?

Kerry was far and away the better candidate. He would be far and away the better President. 

It’s a lose-lose for everyone.  Bush just has no idea how to extricate the country from the mess it’s in (actually he’s so blind he doesn’t see any mess), and the world watches absolutely aghast to see the good people of America indict themselves this time.

Thanks to the blogs, and bloggers such as yourself, I know that you now find yourself in uncharted water. It’s as if half the country (or just over half) is in the grip of a cult, thinks, as cult members do, that their thoughts are the only right thoughts, their leader is anointed (Bush helps them with this delusion), and that ANYone who opposes them in any way shape or form is the enemy.  No dissent is ever allowed within a cult.  Absolute mind-manipulation.  And seeing Fox call it again for Bush gives a surreal sense of Deja-vu – Uncle Rupert once again is the Kingmaker (that’s twice at least this year, and Blair looks safe too).

My thoughts and prayers are with you at this time.

Actually, I predicted it. I posted it on my blog at 9:30 last night.

I’m curious why the anonymous person from NZ believes that those who voted for Bush are ‘cultish’ and victims of ‘mind-manipulation’. Why could she not say the same for Kerry-backers? Because he was defeated, or because she views political differences as odious personality flaws?

No, Mike, it can’t be said for Kerry-backers, and not because he lost.

Think about cultish behavior.  People who one might, under ordinary circumstances, consider to be intelligent, rational individuals, find themselves following a central figure who is none of those things and lives in some alternate universe where all he can see is sunshine and lollipops.  To blindly follow someone like that so slavishly and unquestioningly, when hard evidence to the contrary is provided,  carries all the hallmarks of cultish behavior.

Hitler had his Goebbels and Goehring; Bush has his Cheney and Rove.  Same thing.

Mike, this came from my anonymous reader in OZ.

I think Bush is cultish because:

1) He alone hears what God wants for the nation, and as a result, these “conversations” form the basis of his gut instinct; Kerry made no such claims; cult members can’t question the word of god as espoused by their leader because to do so they call into question the rightness/wrongness of god him/herself.  Bush, to me, combines Messianic Narcissism,  ruthless cynicism, and the intellectual curiosity of an inanimate object.

2) A fundamental principle (pun intentional) of a cult is that the cult leader and its members alone hear correctly from god; all other religions, sects, churches, etc. don’t have the true message; translated this means that liberals, gays, members of minorities, non-Bushlike Republicans don’t have the true message, or probably in godspeak are “lukewarm”, and should be spat out (a variation of “You’re for us or against us”); in watching the US on both sides there is a tendency from especially the Right Wing Evangelicals to think of fellow Christians/people of faith who don’t hold their rigid views as “enemies”.  A Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Catholic, even another Evangelical may walk a different faith journey from me, but they are not my “enemy”. Their faith doesn’t frighten me, or call down God’s judgement on my country (or, in evangelical-speak, my “nation”).  “Democrats”, who walk a probably more moderate faith journey, seem to allow more room for doubt.  This isn’t to flip-flop, this is to mature.

3) Cults are very easy to get into, and very much harder to get out of.  A traditionally moderate conservative of my parents’ generation would be unlikely to join the conservative movement now, because the “point of central balance” has moved so far to the right.  In my experience, members of cults don’t willingly join a cult – they join a “movement” which gradually distorts itself into something quite unrecognizable from the movement they joined, and usually it takes something startlingly momentous for them to decide to leave.  The leaving is profoundly difficult – they must change their minds about the movement itself, must forego the people, friendships, and lifestyle they have made for themselves (often to the exclusion of even close family); yes, the “liberals” nowadays are different to those historical, but there doesn’t seem to be the slavish devotion to belonging preached from on high.  Attitudes to “worldly goods”, and especially differing attitudes between the leader and the group members, are very noticeable here.

4) I am inherently suspicious of all mainstream media, simply because their raison d’etre is not to provide truth, but to provide an audience for their advertisers.  They will say whatever they need to say in order to enhance their audience.  Division works best.  Rupert Murdoch understands this best of all.  He professes to be an evangelical Christian, although those who have written biographies of him say that this should be taken with salt shaker close by.  Murdoch’s message is so subtle you’re unaware you’re even being deceived.  Not one editorial of his 174 newspapers, globally, criticized the Iraq war.  The journalists know when to tow the party line.  The Australian public, to this day, remain pretty much blissfully unaware that during Bush’s visit there last year the Australian media was gagged in their own country.  This can not have happened without collusion between politicians (Bush and Howard) and media moguls, principally Murdoch.  If you need a cause to keep fighting for, remain vigilant that NO media owner can gain exclusive access to the internet, which remains the only truly independent media today.

5) If what I read today is correct, it would seem that the Evangelical church is delighted that their prayers have been answered, and a Man of God continues unchecked in the White House.  Over the next few months/years, some of those same evangelicals are going to realise that they have been cynically manipulated by those who have used them in order to gain and keep power, and not the other way around.  In my experience there is going to be a lot of pain for them sometime soon – the cynicism and hypocrisy will out, eventually.

I could go on, but this serves for starters.  This statement comes from first-hand experience of someone leaving a cult, and the “deprogramming”/loving and time it took to work through this stuff.