Pick of the Day: Apocalyptic Discourse in the White House

Dr. Ira Chernus hails from the University of Colorado. He was orginally supposed to deliver today's lecture at the university (RIC 119, 3:30 p.m.) last March, but he got snowed in somewhere and couldn't make it.

The George W. Bush White House, as most Canadians know, was full of right-wing loons who either fervantly believed in all sorts of apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist claptrap, or else were ruthless enough to exploit this truly scary undercurrent in American society for political gain. Thank God they're no longer in power, right?
Well ... yeah, I guess. But the full title of Chernus's lecture is Apocalyptic Discourse in the White House: FDR to Obama. That suggests that threads of that way of thinking cross party lines and are deeply embedded in American political culture. And the impact it has, worldwide, is considerable.

Take the U.S's blinkered support for Israel. It's driven, in part, by a fanatical belief in the southern Bible Belt that before Jesus can return to Earth and the Rapture occur, in which the righteous will ascend to Heaven and the sinful will rot in Hell or whatever, Israel must be restored to its Biblical glory. Each year, the U.S. provides Israel with billions in military aid to protect itself from Arab aggression. One tactic that Israel has adopted to secure its presence in the Middle East is to establish settlements in the Palestinian-held West Bank and Gaza Strip. The irony is exquisite. Unless Jews see the light and convert when Jesus returns, they're destined, in the minds of hardcore U.S. Christians, to burn in hell along with all the other heathens. But until then, they're invaluable allies.

Because of the mythology that has built up around their country -- inspired, in no small part, by fundamentalist religion -- Americans truly believe they are divinely ordained to lead the rest of the world. In his talk, Chernus will hopefully shed some light on how this discourse infected American politics, and what can be done to eliminate its pernicious influence. Definitely worth checking out.