We Read Lefty Propaganda So You Don't Have To: Bill Moyers

All right, deep breath. Relax. Deep breath. Relax.

OK, I'm ready.

From Bill Moyers' latest hysterical screed, a desperate cry hurled into the rarified air of the utterly irrlevant:

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Amen, brother Bill! You've finally discovered the lunacy that was the Carter Administration. Man, do you believe that unilateral disarmament crap?

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

I'm with you, Bill! I feel you! Why the Left persists in the pursuit of the man perfectable by the State is beyond me, too. Now, fortunately Liberation Theology is pretty much dead, but I appreciate the continued vigilance against marrying Marxism and Deism. Jesus didn't make no gulags, know what I mean?

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

I'm not quite sure why we're talking about James Watt, Brother Bill, but given the amount of deforesting the Soviets did, especially above the Arctic Circle with a ready supply of half-dead slave labor, I'll presume we'll get back on track. If Christ doesn't return first, of course.

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true -- one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

Ahh, irony! Bill, didn't I read somewhere that you were a man of the cloth or something? No, not Brooks Brothers. I mean Christian. When Christ said, "I am the alpha and the omega", was he identifying which fraternity he belonged to? Sure are a lot of orthodox Jews who believe the Bible to be literally true, what we call the Old Testament portion of it, anyway. If only they'd listen to you! Bacon all around, I say.

And I don't know why you're bringing that old Blondie tune into a perfectly good discourse regarding the horrors of the Carter years, when freedom was on the run.

That's right -- the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Umm, okay.

Well, if by "today", all of 2004 will do, I found the following list:

Bestselling books of 2004
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, Doubleday, $24.95. A religious thriller about the secret origins of Christianity hidden in a Renaissance painting.

The South Beach Diet, by Arthur Agatston, Rodale Press, $24.95. Tasty recipes based on the famous diet by a Miami cardiologist emphasizes good fats and good carbs.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom, Hyperion, $19.95. An amusement-park worker discovers that life in heaven is a journey with unexpected twists and turns.

Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown, Simon & Schuster, $7.99. World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon discovers the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood.

The South Beach Diet Good Fats/Good Carbs Guide, by Arthur Agatston, Rodale Press, $7.99. The latest information regarding good fats and good carbs.

The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren, Zondervan, $19.99. Pastor Warren thinks there is too much focus on the self. He puts the focus back on God, a chapter a day, for 40 days.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America the Book, by Jon Stewart, Warner, $24.95. A satiric textbook on American history and government.

My life, by Bill Clinton, Knopf, $35. The former president recounts his hardscrabble childhood in Hope, Ark; his illustrious academic career; and his meteoric rise in politics.

Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, Penguin, $14. In this coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s, 14-year-old Lily Owen is determined to find out more about her mother.

Deception Point, by Dan Brown, Simon & Schuster, $7.99. A rare object is discovered in the Arctic ice that could have profound implications for NASA and the presidential election.

Courtesy of Barnes & Noble

Doesn't look like any of the books you mention made the list. Now, the only non-Lefty spiritual book on there is Rick Warren's book. Doesn't quite make up for
three Dan Browns and a Bill Clinton, though.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.

Not indebted enough to reference it by title or link to it, though, huh? Don't worry, Brother Bill, I Googled it for you. Or for your research intern, as the case may be.

Whoa, we cut a bit close in our paraphrasing, don't we, Bill?

From George:

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met.

From Bill:

These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Would've been nice to have some primary source material referenced by George and Bill, but I guess part of the fun is making readers Google everything.

As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

Hmm, I've never heard it described quite that way, at least not by believers, who typically, in my experience, emphasize that those who do not embrace Christ during the Rapture will have additional opportunities to do so. Nothing about the supposed joys of watching your friends, family, and colleagues suffer if they refuse to do so. Somehow, I think Brother Bill rather likes the notion of seeing his political and religious enemies suffer enough to inject it into the story.

Is this how urban legends get built?

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed -- an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 -- just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

Really? References, please? Not that I don't trust you, Brother Bill, but you keep making assertions and, ahem, forgetting to provide evidence to back them up.

Hmm, that apocalyptic Rapture Index sounds eerily similar to the Doomsday Clock your fellow left-wingers used to trumpet, which invariably seemed to be between 5 and 2 minutes to midnight (nuclear holocaust), and actually moved CLOSER whenever Ronald Reagan took another step to remove the Soviet Union as a superpower. (Had fewer atomic scientists felt the need to give the Soviets nuclear secrets, perhaps it wouldn't have been needed at all). I'll grant you that your Doomsday Clockwatchers were lunatics, Bill, but I'm not thinking you'll agree with me. I'm sure you viewed the National Debt Clock the same way, until Bill Clinton took power, anyway.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer -- "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

Ahh, an actual reference, for once. Can links be far behind?

Now, waitaminute!---I found this article by Scherer first. Here's an interesting quote:

But a scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism -- when was the last time you heard a conservative politician talk about that?

Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.

Two things here that you've seem to have forgotten to mention, Bill.

1. Watt prefaced his remarks with "God gave us these things to use." Hmmm, that doesn't seem such a radical notion, at least in Christian circles.

2. Watt was fired in part due to this comment. If those awful, nutty, apocalyptic Christians were so powerful as to influence foreign policy and move world events as pawns on a chessboard, Bill, do you think they might have prevented one of their own from being canned as Interior Secretary? Or will James Watt simply have to abide until the Rapture to see his enemies steeped in pitch and such?

Oh, for God's sake! (Sorry, Brother Bill).

That WAS the article you referenced! You linked to it yourself, apparently. Funny, the title's now "The Godly Must Be Crazy". Hmm, that's a bit more, umm, controversial a title, isn't it?

No matter.

So why'd you Dowdify Watts' quote and leave off Scherer's note that Watt was fired in part because of it?

Plus, would you mind providing a link to the data demonstrating that "millions of people" believe this, or are you just extrapolating that "fact" from La Haye and Jenkins' "Left Behind" readership?

No matter---millions of people believe you're talking out of your....

Whoops.

I'd intended to Fisk the rest of the piece, but apparently Norm Coleman's newspaper is now registration only for the second page and beyond of articles.

No matter, I think we've made the point that Bill Moyers' real issue with being left behind is the last couple of election cycles.

Update:

Brainster beat me to the punch (again!)

Update II:

Dave Kopel has a similar take.

Update III:

If Lileks stands with us, who can stand against us?