Kiss the enlightenment goodbye!

Bush won.

It didn't surprise me. It disappointed me. Throughout the campaigns right up to the day of the election I thought he would either win it or steal it.

The disappointment came because I had grown cautiously optimistic after learning on election day that there was a big turnout. I uncritically assumed that would benefit the Democrats ... that the hip hop kids really were defying past experience and turning out to vote.

Be that as it may ... back to reality.

What does it all mean in the bigger scheme of things? One thing for certain, as President Bush said in his news conference today, he has earned political capital and he will spend it in pursuit of the agenda he clearly outlined in his campaign.

1. Overhaul the federal income tax code to benefit owners of wealth. (God has rewarded them; it's theirs and Caesar shouldn't take it away.)

2. "Fix" Social Security by allowing private ownership of some share of newly created assets. (Individual ownership again.)

3. Fight terrorism as a battle of us versus them, Good against Evil. (God is on our side.)

4. Win the war in Iraq to stabilize the Middle East for Israel, that is, Zion. (God has promised Israel to the Jews, and to bless the nations and peoples that help the Jews.)

This is banana republic economics cobbled onto Manifest Destiny foreign policy. We should be doubling over in laughter at these proposals. But we're not, are we? We are in the midst of their enactment.

Beliefs are trumping facts. Dogma is shouting down logic.

People who applaud the death penalty and war as something other than the last resort also clamor for an end to legal abortions and a halt to stem cell research, gladly paying out of the national treasure for prisons and armies but not for childcare or healthcare.

We deride Socialism at the periphery of policy and overlook Fascism firmly astraddle our economy. Why do the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland enjoy the highest standards of living in the world? Why are we somewhere below 20th (is it 24th?) in the ranking of life expectancy? Why do some of our inner cities have birth mortality rates equaling those in what we call third world countries?

The same group of folks who brought us slavery and racial prejudice are now leading the onslaught against any sexual orientation other than the missionary position between a woman and a man ... under the cloak of the church's blessing. Their reading of The Bible teaches them that sexual lust is the Devil (a literal being named Satan) influencing us.

People who literally believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus, and do not believe in evolution, make up the core group who re-elected George W. Bush to the Presidency of the United States. They are the ones who gave him his mandate.

Kiss the enlightenment goodbye. Bring on the End Times as prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

Ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Get ready for the Battle of Armageddon.

Don't worry. God is on our side. We are headed for the Millennium, a thousand years of peace under God's authority.

By the way, where did we hear about a thousand year rule before? Wasn't it something Hitler's Third Reich used to preach?